CRS-1 ISS Resupply Docking Coming Up Shortly

On-time and on-spec, the SpaceX Dragon is now its way to the ISS. Following a Sunday night, 2035 ET launch, the Dragon capsule reached its planned orbit of 212 miles above Earth, despite a single engine failure about a minute into the mission, and is on course to catch up to the station during the next couple of days. It has opened the two solar arrays on the side of the spacecraft to power its systems from sunlight.

SpaceX launched the first of a dozen operational missions to deliver supplies to the International Space Station on Oct. 7 for NASA. Launch time came at 8:35 p.m. from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, just a few miles south of the space shuttle launch pads. The spacecraft will be joined to the station three days later.

If all goes as planned, Dragon will arrive at the station on Wednesday, October 10, when it will be grappled and berthed to the complex for an expected two week visit. Dragon is scheduled to return to Earth on October 28 for a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of southern California. Dragon is the only space station cargo craft capable of returning a significant amount of supplies back to Earth, including experiments.

Dragon is filled with about 1,000 pounds of supplies, including critical materials to support the 166 investigations planned for the station’s Expedition 33 crew, of which 63 will be new.

Dragon will return with about 734 pounds of scientific materials, including results from human research, biotechnology, materials and education experiments, as well as about 504 pounds of space station hardware.

SpaceX CRS-1 is the first of at least 12 missions to the International Space Station that SpaceX will fly for NASA under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract. In December 2008, NASA announced that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft had been selected to resupply the space station after the end of the space shuttle program in 2011. Under the CRS contract, SpaceX will restore an American capability to deliver and return significant amounts of cargo, including science experiments, to the orbiting laboratory – a capability not available since the retirement of the space shuttle.

FMI: www.nasa.gov, www.spacex.com