Data from the relaunch, scheduled for November 8, will help design a larger Dragon to deorbit the ISS. SpaceX will launch the space station for the first time on Friday, November 8, as the company prepares for the final shutdown of the orbital complex.

NASA officials announced at the press conference held on Monday, November 4, that the Dragon cargo spacecraft docked with the International Space Station (ISS) will operate for 12.5 minutes on Friday, November 8. Other spacecraft have done this before, but this will be a first for the SpaceX capsule and an important precursor to the larger Dragon vehicle that will one day destroy the ISS.

“The data we will collect in this relaunch and guidance control demonstration will be very useful…and will lead to future capabilities, particularly for U.S. deorbiting spacecraft,” said SpaceX Director Jared Matter. flight reliability, he told reporters during a livestreamed teleconference.

In July, SpaceX was tasked with deorbiting the ISS before 2030, when new commercial space stations will be ready to replace the aging complex. SpaceX will use a Dragon launch vehicle to do this, so a planned restart of the ISS using the current Dragon generation would be beneficial.

The ISS is in low Earth orbit, approximately 250 miles (400 km) above our planet. Stray molecules in Earth’s atmosphere eventually drag the six-bedroom complex downward, necessitating the use of spacecraft to “relaunch,” or lift the space station to a higher altitude.

Traditionally, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft performed this function, but the situation is changing rapidly. Russia remains ISS partner after unauthorized invasion of Ukraine in 2022; NASA has emphasized that although most other international space agreements have been terminated, the ISS is a political project and cannot function as independent parts.

Russia plans to start building its own space station before 2028, that is, before the remaining obligations under the ISS program expire in 2030. If Russia refuses to participate, this will mean that the Soyuz will have to be replaced by other ships. NASA has already tested acceleration with the Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship in 2022. Now it’s SpaceX’s turn.

“It’s a good show,” Metter said of the reboot. It did not immediately achieve the delta displacement or thrust per unit mass of the spacecraft that the maneuver was expected to provide, but emphasized that its duration would be long enough to “collect a lot of data” for the US orbital vehicle.

SpaceX’s historic move to the ISS follows several problems with the company’s equipment that NASA and the company say are unrelated. They have caused problems with Falcon 9 rocket launches and landings, as well as Dragon landings, in recent weeks. All issues were resolved quickly without affecting crew safety or public safety, and NASA officials expressed confidence in SpaceX’s capabilities after working with the company to conduct a comprehensive review of SpaceX’s operations.

“We work very closely with SpaceX on everything we do with these Dragon launches. They share data with us very freely and we work together to resolve any issues,” Bill Spetch, NASA’s ISS program operations and integration manager, told reporters. he said. in a teleconference on Monday. “Obviously, we always keep the safety of vehicles coming to the ISS as a top priority, and that hasn’t really changed for us,” he added.

The Falcon 9 rocket, the most productive and successful launch vehicle in history, suffered three launch failures between mid-July and late September. In the first broadcast on July 11, 20 SpaceX Starlink Internet satellites were lost due to a fuel leak from the upper stage. The Falcon 9 returned to flight two weeks after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which oversees regulatory activities on launches, approved SpaceX’s plan.

On August 28, Falcon 9 experienced a second problem; After the successful Starlink launch, its first phase did not land as intended. SpaceX returned to flight three days later, but on September 28, the Falcon 9 was grounded for the third time due to a problem with the booster unit while launching the Crew-9 astronaut mission to the ISS for NASA.

The rocket remained on Earth again for two weeks, with an exception the FAA granted to launch Europe’s Hera asteroid probe on October 7. Falcon 9 returned to flight on October 11 and has successfully launched several times in recent weeks.

“We looked at each of these anomalies independently, but we also looked at any transitions that might have occurred later,” Metter said. “We found no common intersection, common theme, or systemic problem in any of these anomalies.”

However, NASA’s Independent Aerospace Safety Advisory Group expressed concern about these events, along with a minor issue in the October 25 landing of Crew Dragon, the human-powered version of the Dragon, with four Crew-8 astronauts aboard, SpaceNews reported. brought. There were minor timing anomalies in the parachutes and wires that had no apparent adverse effect on the crew’s rotation.

A NASA Crew-8 astronaut suffered an undisclosed health issue after landing that caused them to be hospitalized overnight; They were released the next day. NASA emphasized that the drop was otherwise “nominal” from an engineering perspective. NASA also did not establish any connection between the medical event and Dragon’s performance.

Still, the safety group said spaceflight requires constant vigilance to ensure the safety of astronauts and the mission, and called on neither NASA nor SpaceX to abandon tracking practices.

“When you look at these recent events over the last few weeks, it’s very interesting. [] Former Space Shuttle astronaut Kent Rominger, who served on the panel, said in an Oct. 31 conference call: “I want to say that as hardware ages and the speed of operations increases, it’s clear that safe operation requires greater attention to detail.” By SpaceNews.

“Both NASA and SpaceX should focus on safe Crew Dragon operations and not take any ‘normal’ operations for granted,” Rominger added, but neither he nor other panel members offered specific recommendations or precautions.