On Monday, July 18, at 12:45 am EDT Cape Canaveral Airforce Base will once again come to life as a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will liftoff from launch command 40. The Falcon 9 rocket will be carrying an unmanned Dragon capsule that will be loaded with 5,000 pounds of supplies headed for the ISS (international space station). Among the items in the capsule will be experimental equipment and a landing dock adapter that will be used for the Boeing CST-100 and manned version of the SpaceX Dragon capsule. Both craft are set to go into service next year to carrying astronauts to ISS.
Once the first stage of the Falcon 9
separates the people manning the command center will attempt to land
the booster at landing zone 1 at Cape Canaveral. If everything goes
as planned this will be the 5th successful landing for
SpaceX. The first was the ground land in December of last year. In
April and May of this year they had three consecutive landings on a
drone barge before a failure to land the booster last month.
After the seperation the unmanned
Dragon will continue on 2 day journey to the ISS. The astronauts
aboard the space station will then use a 57.7 foot (17.6 meter) long
robotic arm to retrieve the capsule and attach it to the station. The
capsule will remain at the station for more than a month while it is
unloaded. When the mission is complete the Dragon will be released
from the station to plunge back to Earth. The return trip will only
take about 30 for the capsule to re-enter Earth orbit. It will then
slash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California.
No comments:
Post a Comment