SpaceX ship that will rescue astronauts docks with the ISS – 09/30/2024 – Science
The Crew Dragon capsule that should bring astronauts Barry Eugene Wilmore and Sunita Williams back to Earth arrived this Sunday (30) at the International Space Station (ISS).
The SpaceX spacecraft docked with the ISS one day after its launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States, atop a Falcon 9 rocket. Astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexandre Gorbounov traveled on it.
The administrator of the American space agency, Bill Nelson, considered the launch successful. “We live in an exciting time of exploration and innovation,” he said.
“We know that this launch is unique, with just two passengers,” said Jim Free, associate administrator at NASA, last Friday (27) during a press conference, in which he also thanked SpaceX “for its support and flexibility.”
Elon Musk’s company is responsible for the regular ISS crew rotation mission.
The Crew-9 liftoff was postponed from mid-August to September to give NASA teams more time to make a decision regarding Boeing’s first manned Starliner mission. The launch was also postponed for a few days due to Hurricane Helene, which hit Florida.
Hague and Gorbounov will spend around five months on the ISS and, until then, carry out around 200 scientific experiments. When they return to Earth, they will be joined by Wilmore and Williams.
The two NASA astronauts traveled to the space station in early June aboard Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule.
The spacecraft developed a helium leak even before launch, a problem that repeated itself again on its journey to the ISS.
The mission, which was then expected to last eight days, was extended due to technical problems in the capsule. The American space agency rescheduled the ship’s return three times — originally it would be on June 14th, it was changed to the 18th, then the 22nd and later the 26th — and, finally, there was no set date.
With the extension of the mission, NASA and Boeing officials were reluctant to use the word “trapped” to refer to the two astronauts who traveled in the capsule, which would add another negative point to the history of a project that has accumulated delays due to setbacks. technicians.
In August of this year, NASA announced that Wilmore and Williams would wait for the Crew-9 mission to return to Earth. On that occasion, Bill Nelson mentioned the importance of focusing on safety and recalled the accidents with the Challenger (1986) and Columbia (2003) space shuttles to highlight the change in internal culture that emerged from these tragedies.
As a result, the Boeing capsule ended up returning empty, completing its landing in the White Sands desert, New Mexico, in the early hours of September 7th. The capsule is the first American designed to make a descent onto dry land — all others, past and present, made landings (landings at sea).
It was the third time that a Starliner – without a crew – successfully performed the landing maneuver.
Even with the problems presented during its first manned mission, the Boeing capsule could end up being certified to carry out regular flights to the space station. But first you will have to make corrections so that the observed failures do not happen again.
