[ad_1]
On November 19, what is arguably SpaceX’s most important Falcon 9 booster returned to Port Canaveral with a surprise – perhaps the most dramatic fold ever seen on one of the recovered rockets.
Tilted 10+ degrees from vertical, the tilt was immediately visible as the top of the rocket crested the horizon, and it later became clear that one of the four landing feet of the Falcon 9 booster B1061 had no contact with the ship drone Just Read the deck of The Instruction (JRTI). Four days earlier, the Falcon 9 (and the B1061) became the first commercially developed rocket in history to be certified for NASA astronaut launch, a feat it accomplished with no problems. The Dragon crew safely delivered four astronauts to the International Space Station on November 16, marking the culmination of more than half a decade of (mostly) uninterrupted work.
Even before the momentous launch of Crew-1’s Crew Dragon and Falcon 9, however, NASA had already revealed some details that would make parts of Crew-1 even more important and the subsequent Crew-2 launch – expected as early as March 2021. – perhaps the most significant mission in SpaceX history.
In short, less than a month after SpaceX’s equally flawless Crew Dragon Demo-2 astronaut debuted, NASA’s contract changes revealed that the company had allowed SpaceX to reuse both Dragon pods. is Falcon 9 booster on upcoming astronaut launches.
In a series of completely unexpected events, a change to SpaceX’s $ 3.1 billion NASA Commercial Crew Program (CCP) contract was identified on June 3. Without leaving much room for interpretation, the contract tweak states that SpaceX is now “[allowed to reuse] the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and the Crew Dragon spacecraft starting with “its second operational astronaut launch, known as Post Certification Mission-2 (PCM-2) or Crew-2”.
Teslarati.com – June 9, 2020
A few months after that discovery, NASA itself specifically announced that it had given SpaceX the green light to reuse the Demo-2 Crew Dragon C206 capsule and the Crew-1 Falcon 9 B1061 booster on Crew-2, the second operational launch of the company astronaut. Scheduled no earlier than March 31, 2021, Crew-2 will most likely launch before the Crew-1 Crew Dragon leaves the space station and returns its four crew members to Earth, a milestone expected in April.
For nearly everyone who has followed NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) and its attitude to SpaceX’s reusability efforts from the start, the space agency’s quick willingness to entrust its most important cargo – beings humans – to dragons tested in flight is The Falcon 9 boosters were a big surprise. If SpaceX is able to reuse both the C206 capsule and the B1061 booster as intended, Crew-2 will undoubtedly be the most significant milestone in the history of commercial spaceflight, simultaneously proving that astronauts can be safely launched on proven commercial rockets. is spaceship.
Of course, while the C206 Crew Dragon Demo-2 capsule may have already been successfully recovered, SpaceX still needed to land the Falcon 9 booster B1061 and safely return it to port after Crew-1 before it could consider reusing it on Crew-2. Based on the appearance of the rocket upon arrival in Port Canaveral, the B1061 had a extremely end the call. With what one can guess from observation alone, it appears that sometime after the B1061 landed and before the drone ship’s tank-like “ Octagrabber ” robot could secure the booster, a stray wave or a sudden blast from the high seas must have jumped, sliding B1061 onto the slippery deck.
That would explain why the first stage Falcon 9 arrived in port on one of the most remote corners of the JRTI drone ship – a sign also that B1061 likely hit the yellow barrier included specifically to prevent boosters from sliding off the drone ship decks. At the same time, the B1061 must have had a moderately rough landing, causing at least one of its four legs to consume a large portion of a disposable shock called a “crush core”, leaving the booster sitting at an angle. Based on the arrival photos, that tilt likely left JRTI’s Octagrabber unable to clip onto all four of the Falcon 9’s mounting clamps, forcing recovery technicians to improvise and manually chain the rocket to the bridge where the robotic solution failed.
Thankfully, the apparent heroism and luck of the SpaceX recovery team proved sufficient, and the sturdy Booster Falcon 9 was brought back to the mainland without any problems, lifted from JRTI’s deck approximately 24 hours after arriving in port. Based on photos of the crush cores at the lower end of each leg, the abrupt landing and bumpy travel of the B1061 was fairly mild as far as they go, and as CEO Elon Musk notes, replacing the crush core is likely everything you need to make the rocket as good as new.
Had the B1061 been lost at sea, crew-2 would almost certainly have been delayed to give SpaceX enough time to create an entirely new Falcon 9 first stage. Fortunately for SpaceX, that didn’t happen, and the company’s plans to launch astronauts on the proven booster are still in play.
Source link
