Dragon capsule reaches space station, chocolate ripple ice cream intact

SpaceX's Dragon capsule delivered cargo including a little ice cream to the International Space Station Wednesday, confirming that a new era for NASA has finally been realized.

|
NASA/AP
This image from NASA-TV shows the capture of the Dragon capsule by a robot arm on the International Space Station early Wednesday. It's the first official delivery by the California-based SpaceX company under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA. The contract calls for 12 such shipments.

The International Space Station welcomed its first commercial resupply mission Wednesday with the arrival of Space Exploration Technologies' Dragon capsule.

Dragon is laden with scientific gear, replacement parts for the space station, and a welcome shipment of chocolate ripple ice cream stashed in an otherwise empty lab freezer the capsule carried up.

The capsule, which launched Sunday night atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, reached the orbiting outpost about 15 minutes ahead of schedule. Using the station's robotic arm, Akihiki Hoshide, a station flight engineer, snagged Dragon at 7:56 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. A little over an hour later, Dragon was safely docked with the station.

"Looks like we've tamed the dragon," said station commander Sunita Williams when the arm initially captured the capsule.

"We're happy she's on board with us," she said, adding a special shout-out for the ice cream.

The mission marks an important milestone for NASA along a path first set out under the Bush administration and confirmed by President Obama. After the space shuttle Columbia disaster in February 2003, NASA has pivoted to focus on sending humans beyond low-Earth orbit, while it has steered the job of ferrying supplies and astronauts to the space station to private companies.

The effort to carry astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit took a step forward in August, when NASA announced agreements worth a combined $1.1 billion to help SpaceX, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada Corporation develop such capabilities. But Dragon's arrival at the space station Wednesday – the first flight under a 12-flight, $1.6-billion contract – shows that the goal of bringing commercial carriers into the station resupply business is now being realized.

SpaceX is one of two US companies with resupply contracts. The second, Orbital Sciences Corp., is slated to test-fly its Antares booster by year's end and loft its first demonstration flight early next year.

Thursday, the station crew is schedule to open Dragon's hatch and inspect the craft's interior before unloading the cargo. Dragon will remain docked at the station until Oct. 28, when it's slated to return 1,673 pounds of hardware and experiment samples to Earth. Dragon's ability to return cargo from the space station to Earth is a unique capability among all the craft currently serving the station. Dragon will parachute to an ocean splashdown off the southern California coast, where it will be plucked out of the water and returned to an unloading facility at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, Calif.

Although a key stage of Dragon's first commercial mission has been completed, the launch Sunday evening saw one of the nine engines powering the Falcon 9's first stage shut down 79 seconds after launch.

The first-stage propulsion system is designed to withstand the loss of two engines before the delivery of its primary payload is jeopardized, the company notes. Once on-board computers detected the failure, they quickly readjusted the rocket's path to keep it on course to intercept the space station.

The course correction, however, came at the expense of a second payload the Falcon 9 was carrying -- a prototype communications satellite for ORBCOMM Inc. and built by Sierra Nevada. Although the satellite is on orbit, it's hurtling around Earth at a much lower altitude than planned.

It's common for commercial launch companies to piggyback several payloads on one rocket. This was to be the first demonstration that a commercial satellite and a government station-resupply payload could share the same ride. Even with the failure of one engine on the first stage, the second stage carrying both payloads could have delivered the satellite to its proper orbit as well. But the satellite was deposited short of its goal to avoid either the second stage or the satellite coming too close to the space station as they headed higher.

SpaceX engineers are still trying to uncover the cause of the engine failure.  

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Dragon capsule reaches space station, chocolate ripple ice cream intact
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/1010/Dragon-capsule-reaches-space-station-chocolate-ripple-ice-cream-intact
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe