Dragon fails to keep its date with the International Space Station

The Dragon cargo spaceship failed to keep its date with the International Space Station. It was carrying 4,000 pounds (1,800-Kg) of gear to the space station and among the items was a large parking space. It was an International Docking Adaptor which was designed to make it easier for an array of commercial crew spacecraft to dock at the orbiting lab in the future.
This has been reported in zeenews.india.com dated 28 June 2015.

This failure of Dragon is attributed to explosion of the unmanned SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket – it happened within minutes after launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida and before the first stage could separate.
The rocket was carrying the Dragon cargo spacecraft with supplies and equipment meant for the ISS. It was the 7th cargo mission of SpaceX – it has a contact for 12 missions. Now, in view of this incident, another Dragon would have to be readied for dispatch of the items required by the ISS.
(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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International Space Station astronauts finally get their Christmas presents

#ISS #DragonCapsule #SpaceX It was a much belated shipment of Christmas presents for the astronauts on-board the International Space Station that finally arrived at the ISS along with much-needed groceries.
It was delivered by Dragon, the supply ship of SpaceX Company. It had taken off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Saturday and arrived at the orbiting lab early on Monday. The astronauts working inside the station made use of a robotic crane to pluck the capsule from orbit and grab its precious cargo.
Station commander Butch Wilmore radioed to Mission Control in Houston about the safe arrival of the items because the six astronauts in ISS were getting a little low on supplies since, the previous supply ship was destroyed in an October launch explosion. That was owned by a different company and, NASA had to arrange and send replacement equipment aboard Dragon.
Incidentally, Butch Wilmore was waiting eagerly for fresh stock of mustard - the condiment cabinet of ISS is, reportedly, empty.
The Dragon capsule is believed to be loaded with over 2,313-Kg of food, clothing, equipment and science experiments for the six-member station crew and includes an instrument to measure clouds and aerosols in the Earth's atmosphere. The capsule will not return immediately but will remain docked to ISS for about four weeks and, then, would fly back to Earth.

SpaceX experiment with Falcon rocket soft landing fails

#SpaceX #Dragon #ElonMusk #Falcon9 The American SpaceX firm has revealed that its experiment with soft landing of its Falcon rocket on a floating sea platform was not successful. The vehicle was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on a mission to send a cargo capsule to the International Space Station.
However, once the first-stage of the rocket completed its part of this task, it tried to make a controlled return and hit the platform hard – this was confirmed by the company CEO Elon Musk via tweet.
SpaceX will keep trying in order to prove this type of capability because, it would be a method to reduce the costs dramatically because it would pave the way for normally disposable rockets to be recovered, refurbished and re-used. If successful it would mean tremendous savings in the cost of flights.
Moreover, it might also point to new ways of bringing spacecraft back down to Earth in general and change the way we look at space flight at present.
The present system is that rockets have an expendable architecture. Once airborne, they discard engines and empty propellant tanks to save the weight so that their upper-stage, including the satellite payload, can jump to orbit. The unwanted hardware is discarded and heads to Earth and disintegrates en-route and, hence, an expensive rocket is required for each launch – that is what SpaceX is aiming to do, to eliminate such wastages.

NASA’s Orion unmanned spacecraft completes historic test flight

Orion, the unmanned spacecraft of NASA, successfully completed its test flight labeled as Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) and returned back to Earth – this is seen as the first tentative step towards mission Mars.
Orion splashed down in the Pacific Ocean 275 miles west of Baja California and the splashdown, which was streamed live from a NASA drone – naturally, it sparked scenes of celebration at the space agency’s Mission Control in Houston.
Orion had successfully taken off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Friday and was carried into space by a Delta IV Heavy Rocket. NASA has lauded the mission as a "textbook" maiden flight. The $370 million test flight was managed by Lockheed Martin and the Delta IV Heavy Rocket was built by United Launch Alliance.
Incidentally, Orion’s journey was a record of sorts the 4 hour and 24 minute because during the orbital mission Orion went deeper into space than any spacecraft built for humans has traveled in more than 40 years. It orbited the Earth twice, and, at one point, hit a maximum altitude of 3,604 miles.
During re-entry, it reached a speed of around 20,000 mph and generated temperatures around 4,000 degrees on the heat shield of the spacecraft.
In the opinion of Chris Carberry, executive director of Explore Mars, a non-profit organization that aims to advance the goal of sending humans to Mars within the next two decades, the Orion test starts us on the path toward sending humans beyond Low Earth Orbit.
He also said that NASA plans to start going to intermediate destinations in the early 2020s, including the Asteroid Redirect mission – and, if that or any other similar mission is to be achieved, there is a need to start testing hardware - as with EFT-1.