This weekend will see the first launch from US soil of a spaceship capable of carrying astronauts into orbit since the retirement of the Space Shuttle.
At 2:49am EST on Saturday, Space-X will launch the first test flight of the new Crewed Dragon spaceship from Florida. This first test flight, called Demo-1, will be uncrewed and will dock with the ISS sometime around 6am EST on Sunday morning. I'll be in the ISS Mission Control Room for the entire rendezvous and docking shift (1am - 9am CST). During the rendezvous phase, there will be several demonstrations to wring out this new vehicle. The rendezvous and docking will be fully automated, but the US crew on the ISS will be monitoring the approach via camara views and windows and will be prepared to command an abort if they see the Dragon leaving it's approach corridor.
However, the fact that it will be unmanned has also caused some additional complications for this test flight that we won't have to worry about for subsequent missions with a crew onboard. For example, on Dragon they use Freon in their AC system. There is a very small risk of a Freon leak into the cabin. If there was crew onboard, they'd notice right away and fix the leak. But with no crew onboard, we may not find out about the leak until we open the hatch after docking. Therefore, we've had to conduct a lot of negotiations with the Russians on how best to protect the ISS crew in the event there was a Freon leak onboard.
Then there's also the minor issue (sarcasm) of the Russians declaring "No Go" for docking at the readiness review earlier this week. They apparently think there's a particular failure which could cause a potential collision between Dragon and ISS, which we think is extremely unlikely. I'm not at liberty to say exactly what this potential failure is due to the information being proprietary, but it's caused us to have to work overtime this week to develop a procedure to prep the crew for this possible scenario ahead of time, including getting the Soyuz ready for a potential emergency undock and landing. Fun stuff.
So yea, assuming we launch on Saturday morning (weather is about 80% go), it'll be an interesting shift on Sunday morning. Wish us luck. Go 'Merica!
https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/category/spacex/
FYI: just ignore any posters responding to this thread saying that NASA isn't real, etc. Debating back and forth with them over whether or not we landed on the moon or if the Earth is flat will only get this thread nuked, and that's what they really want.
At 2:49am EST on Saturday, Space-X will launch the first test flight of the new Crewed Dragon spaceship from Florida. This first test flight, called Demo-1, will be uncrewed and will dock with the ISS sometime around 6am EST on Sunday morning. I'll be in the ISS Mission Control Room for the entire rendezvous and docking shift (1am - 9am CST). During the rendezvous phase, there will be several demonstrations to wring out this new vehicle. The rendezvous and docking will be fully automated, but the US crew on the ISS will be monitoring the approach via camara views and windows and will be prepared to command an abort if they see the Dragon leaving it's approach corridor.
However, the fact that it will be unmanned has also caused some additional complications for this test flight that we won't have to worry about for subsequent missions with a crew onboard. For example, on Dragon they use Freon in their AC system. There is a very small risk of a Freon leak into the cabin. If there was crew onboard, they'd notice right away and fix the leak. But with no crew onboard, we may not find out about the leak until we open the hatch after docking. Therefore, we've had to conduct a lot of negotiations with the Russians on how best to protect the ISS crew in the event there was a Freon leak onboard.
Then there's also the minor issue (sarcasm) of the Russians declaring "No Go" for docking at the readiness review earlier this week. They apparently think there's a particular failure which could cause a potential collision between Dragon and ISS, which we think is extremely unlikely. I'm not at liberty to say exactly what this potential failure is due to the information being proprietary, but it's caused us to have to work overtime this week to develop a procedure to prep the crew for this possible scenario ahead of time, including getting the Soyuz ready for a potential emergency undock and landing. Fun stuff.
So yea, assuming we launch on Saturday morning (weather is about 80% go), it'll be an interesting shift on Sunday morning. Wish us luck. Go 'Merica!
https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/category/spacex/
FYI: just ignore any posters responding to this thread saying that NASA isn't real, etc. Debating back and forth with them over whether or not we landed on the moon or if the Earth is flat will only get this thread nuked, and that's what they really want.
