Private Supply Ship Rockets Toward Space Station

Daily News Article   —   Posted on May 23, 2012

(from NYPost.com) AP, CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Tuesday was the first time a private company has launched a vessel to the International Space Station [ISS]. That’s something only major governments have done – until now.

The SpaceX company made history as its Falcon 9 rocket [launched before] dawn, aiming [to reach] the space station in a few days. The rocket carried into orbit a capsule named Dragon that is packed with 1,000 pounds of space station provisions.

“Falcon flew perfectly!!” SpaceX’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk, said via Twitter. “Dragon in orbit … Feels like a giant weight just came off my back.” …

Launch controllers applauded when the Dragon reached orbit nine minutes into the flight, then embraced one another once the solar panels on the spacecraft popped open. Many of the SpaceX controllers wore untucked T-shirts and jeans or even shorts, a stark contrast to NASA’s old suit-and-tie shuttle team. …

“The significance of this day cannot be overstated,” said a beaming NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “It’s a great day for America. It’s actually a great day for the world because there are people who thought that we had gone away, and today says, ‘No, we’re not going away at all.'”

The real test comes Thursday [May 24] when the Dragon reaches the vicinity of the space station. It will undergo practice maneuvers from more than a mile out. If all goes well, the docking will occur Friday. Musk will preside over the operation from the company’s Mission Control in Hawthorne, Calif., where he monitored the liftoff.

The space station was [orbiting] over the North Atlantic, just east of Newfoundland, when the Falcon took flight.

NASA is looking to the private sector to take over orbital trips in this post-shuttle period; several U.S. companies are vying for the opportunity. The goal is to get American astronauts launching again from U.S. soil. SpaceX officials say that could happen in as little as three years, possibly four.

Until their retirement last summer, NASA’s shuttles provided the bulk of space station equipment and even the occasional crew member. American astronauts are stuck riding Russian rockets to orbit until SpaceX or one of its competitors takes over the job. Russia also is making periodic cargo hauls, along with Europe and Japan.

Musk, a co-creator of PayPal, founded SpaceX a decade ago. He’s poured millions of his own money into the company, and NASA has contributed $381 million as seed money. In all, the company has spent more than $1 billion on the effort. …

The six space station astronauts were especially enthusiastic [about the launch]; the crew beamed down a picture on the eve of the launch, showing the two who will use a robot arm to snare the Dragon.

In December 2010, SpaceX became the first private company to launch a spacecraft into orbit and retrieve it. That test flight of a Dragon capsule paved the way for this mission, which also is meant to culminate with a splashdown of the capsule in the Pacific.

This newest capsule is supposed to remain at the space station for a week before bringing back experiments and equipment. None of the other types of current cargo ships can return safely; they burn up on the way down.

SpaceX and NASA officials stress this is a demonstration flight and that even if something goes wrong, much can be learned.

“Whatever happens today, we could not have done it without @NASA, but errors are ours alone and me most of all,” Musk said via Twitter right before Saturday’s launch abort. The company will try again no matter what; two more Dragon supply missions, in fact, are planned this year.

Musk, 40, is the chief executive officer and chief designer for SpaceX. He also runs Tesla Motors, his electric car company.

[The three-decade U.S. shuttle program, which ferried astronauts and cargo to the Space Station, ended in 2011, leaving Russia as the sole taxi to the ISS until private industry comes up with a replacement.] The three remaining shuttles – Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis – are now relegated to museums. …

Reprinted here for educational purposes only. Associated Press. May not be reproduced on other websites without permission from The New York Post.

Background

SpaceX's Dragon capsule carrying just over 1,000 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station, but cannot dock itself at the orbiting lab. Instead, the capsule will fly near the station on Friday and allow astronauts aboard the outpost to grab it with a robotic arm and attach the vehicle to an open docking port.

The space stations' six-man crew is expected to enter the gumdrop-shaped spacecraft on Saturday. SpaceX plans to have the Dragon capsule return to Earth on May 31, when it is due to splash down in the Pacific Ocean and be retrieved by a recovery ship crew.

SpaceX has a $1.6 billion NASA contract to provide 12 Dragon flights to deliver supplies to the space station. It is one of several NASA contracts aimed at filling American space transportation needs now that the agency's shuttle fleet is retired.

PURPOSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION:
The International Space Station (ISS) serves primarily as a research laboratory, offering an advantage over spacecraft such as NASA's Space Shuttle because it is a long-term platform in the space environment, allowing long-duration studies to be performed, both on specific experiments and on the human crews that operate them. The presence of a permanent crew also means that the station offers benefits over unmanned spacecraft as experiments can be monitored, replenished, repaired or replaced as required by the crew, as can other components of the spacecraft itself. Scientists on the ground, therefore, have swift access to their data and can modify experiments or launch new ones as and when required, benefits generally unavailable on specialized unmanned spacecraft. (from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station.)