Drake reported in latter April that four astronauts on SpaceX's Crew-2 mission were launched for the ISS after becoming the first people to launch on a rocket that has already flown to space. In the the pre-dawn hours at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, after a one-day delay caused by high winds, SpaceX successfully launched humans into space from U.S. shores for the third time in less than a year. But this time, the astronauts sailed into orbit atop a reused Falcon 9 rocket booster—the same booster that sent the Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station last November. They are also riding aboard a used spacecraft: the same Dragon capsule, called Endeavour, that NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley flew during their Demo-2 test flight last May. On that mission, Behnken and Hurley became the first humans to launch from Cape Canaveral since the end of the U.S. space shuttle era.
“It’s kind of exciting to see all those three missions in that one vehicle,” Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, told reporters before launch.
Now the Crew-2 astronauts—all veteran space flyers—are settling in for their roughly 24-hour cruise to the station, where they’ll live for six months. The four-person crew is made up of NASA’s Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet, and Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency (JAXA). More than 200 science experiments are also aboard, including several that will investigate human immune cell function. Late last week, when the crew arrived at Kennedy Space Center, they were treated to a view of their rocket as their plane descended.
“There’s nothing like it, when you look out the window and see a spaceship getting prepared and realize that you’re going to be riding on it in a few days,” McArthur, who was rocking a pair of sparkly silver boots, told reporters after they arrived.
“Flight Proven”
Both NASA and SpaceX contend that reusable spacecraft are crucial for making space travel more affordable. The concept is not new; for years, the space agency reused its small fleet of space shuttles, but reusable rockets weren’t a reality until SpaceX entered the scene. In December 2015, the company successfully returned a Falcon 9 rocket booster to its landing pad for the first time. Since then, it has achieved 80 rocket landings, both on land and on barges at sea, although the company’s boosters still occasionally miss their mark.
Among roughly two dozen reused boosters in the company’s inventory, the most flown is booster B1051, which has so far survived nine uncrewed launches and recoveries. SpaceX says that the latest iterations of its Falcon 9 boosters, known as Block 5, are designed to survive at least 10 launches—and Benji Reed, SpaceX’s senior director of human spaceflight programs, says the company intends to push that limit for uncrewed missions. That equation changes when humans are involved. “This business of human spaceflight is unforgiving,” Norm Knight, NASA’s deputy manager of flight operations, said at a pre-flight press event.
The SpaceX crewed Dragon capsules are designed to fly at least five times each, with some refurbishment between journeys. But before certifying the rocket and spacecraft for the Crew-2 flight, engineers scrutinized every aspect of the hardware, looking for any defects or surprises. During the process, they learned from teams at SpaceX’s Texas facility that the company has been routinely loading extra liquid oxygen fuel into Falcon 9 boosters—the equivalent of 2,500 to 3,000 pounds of fuel, Stich said. But that’s a tiny percentage of the total launch weight, and NASA and SpaceX decided that the overage didn’t pose a threat to the astronauts.
“We ask ourselves all the time, would we be willing to fly our families on these vehicles?” Reed said. “I know there’s a little boy out there whose mom is flying. This is something we pay a lot of attention to.”
The Crew-2 booster, which teams refer to as “flight proven,” last flew in November, and its sooty façade bears the markings of its previous journey into space. It also offered the Crew-2 astronauts a chance to commemorate their flight. “We were lucky enough to draw our initials in the soot on the side of the rocket,” Pesquet said. “I don’t know if this is going to stick, but it’s really cool.”
Life on Station
For Crew-2, life in orbit will include performing science experiments and space station maintenance—and for the first couple of days, it’s going to be a bit cramped up there. The Crew-1 mission’s four astronauts are still on board, as are three astronauts who arrived April 12 on a Russian Soyuz capsule.
To accommodate the 11 inhabitants, managers increased the capacity of the station’s life support systems, such as those that remove carbon dioxide from the air, and crews are setting up temporary sleeping spaces. Living quarters should be a bit roomier after April 28, when Crew-1 is scheduled to depart.
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