SpaceX Given Green Light for First Launch to Space Station

Image Source: SpaceX

SpaceX and NASA are moving ahead with the scheduled April 30 launch date of the Dragon spacecraft and its historic docking with the International Space Station (ISS) after the flight readiness review was approved at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

The comprehensive evaluation of the SpaceX mission is one of the last major steps before the company becomes the first commercial carrier to deliver payloads to the ISS. Although SpaceX founder and chief designer Elon Musk was careful to remind everybody that the flight is a test and success is far from guaranteed.

“I think we’ve got a pretty good shot, but it is worth emphasizing that there’s a lot that can go wrong in a mission like this,” Musk told reporters after the review.

NASA certainly has its fingers crossed for SpaceX’s success, because the agency’s need for a new way to get back and forth from the ISS is more urgent than ever. With the space shuttle’s retirement last year and NASA’s next-gen Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (formerly Orion) still years away from flight, NASA relies on Russian Soyuz rockets to bring crews up and down from the station.

Image Source: NASA

Unmanned craft such as the Russian Progress, European Automated Transfer Vehicles, and Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicles can ferry supplies, but no vehicle can currently bring back equipment and scientific experiments—the existing cargo vehicles burn up in the atmosphere after separating from the station. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft promise to bring a new capability to the station: a cargo craft that can return intact, and the cargo version that will fly first is very similar in design to the planned crew version.

And there’s another reason NASA’s excited about private space, according to Michael Suffredini, NASA’s International Space Station program manager, "NASA needs to . . . help development of the commercial capability to support low Earth orbit both in terms of cargo and humans and other capabilities—robotic servicing, things like that—and NASA needs to start focusing on human exploration beyond low Earth orbit. Those of us who are looking forward to the next step for NASA really are very excited about this next step for the space station."

NASA plans a final review of the Dragon mission on April 23 to verify SpaceX flight software. The Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled for launch at 12:22 p.m. EDT (1622 GMT) on April 30, with a backup launch opportunity on May 3.

Wired.com, Popular Mechanics