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SpaceX Docking: Highlights From Astronauts’ Arrival at the Space Station Astronauts Dock With Space Station After Historic SpaceX Launch
(about 4 hours later)
The Crew Dragon has arrived.The Crew Dragon has arrived.
A SpaceX capsule carrying two NASA astronauts docked at the International Space Station on Sunday morning, less than a day after a historic launch that marked the first time humans had ever traveled to orbit in a spacecraft built and operated by a private company. On Saturday, SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a Crew Dragon capsule carrying two NASA astronauts on top. SpaceX is now the first private business to accomplish a feat — taking people to orbit — that had until now only been done by nations.
The approach of the Crew Dragon proceeded smoothly, about 15 minutes ahead of schedule, with a camera on the space station capturing the red, green and white lights of the capsule as it steadily crept up over the course of a couple of hours. The astronauts, Robert L. Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley, took over manual control for a while, firing the thrusters to nudge the position of the spacecraft, before turning control back to a computer for the final steps leading to docking. Less than a day later, the spacecraft docked at the International Space Station, successfully completing the first leg of its journey.
Once the docking was completed, Mr. Hurley congratulated staff at SpaceX and NASA and said “It’s been a real honor to be just a small part of this nine-year endeavor since the last time a United States spaceship has docked with the International Space Station.” This Crew Dragon test flight is a shakedown cruise to certify that the spacecraft meets NASA’s needs and safety standards in order to start routine trips taking astronauts to and from the space station. The agency has relied on Russia for that task since the space shuttles were retired in 2011. Once astronauts begin using the capsule with regularity, space tourists could also begin to fly it in the years to come.
The docking indicated that the first portion of the test flight with crew aboard was successful. The trip will be considered a complete success once the astronauts return to Earth in the near future, opening the way for more travel to the space station and orbit by astronauts and perhaps space tourists in the years to come. At 1:22 p.m. Eastern time, the two astronauts, Robert L. Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley, disembarked the Crew Dragon, exchanging handshakes and hugs with the three astronauts already on the space station.
The astronauts’ 19-hour trip began on Saturday with a launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was the first trip to orbit from American soil by astronauts since NASA retired its space shuttles in 2011. The capsule blasted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket, also built by SpaceX, the company founded by billionaire Elon Musk. “Welcome to the International Space Station," Christopher Cassidy, the NASA astronaut who is current commander of the space station, said to Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley. “Please come aboard.”
Just after 1 p.m., close to three hours after docking, the hatch was opened between the Crew Dragon and the station. Soon after, the three astronauts already on the station welcomed Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley aboard, and the two new visitors were greeted with embraces and handshakes. In a welcoming ceremony, Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator addressed the astronauts from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where space station operations are managed.
The space station, at an altitude of about 250 miles, zips around Earth at more than 17,000 miles per hour. The fundamental principle of orbital dynamics is that objects in lower orbits move faster, and those in higher orbits move slower. “I will tell you the whole world saw this mission, and we are so, so proud of everything you have done for our country, and in fact, to inspire the world,” Mr. Bridenstine said. He then asked the astronauts if they had managed to get any sleep during the 19-hour trip.
At launch, the Crew Dragon started out trailing the space station. But traveling in an orbit below the space station, it was moving faster and catching up. Through a series of maneuvers, the capsule raised its orbit, allowing the capsule to approach the station at a lower speed. “We did get probably a good seven hours or so opportunity for sleep.” Mr. Behnken replied. “And I did succeed at sleep.”
While the astronauts could dock with the station manually in an emergency, the Crew Dragon’s computers will automatically begin the capsule’s close approach to the space station at about 8:27 a.m., when it is about 4.5 miles away. The current mission will not be a complete success until Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley return to Earth in the Crew Dragon. which they have named Endeavour, the same name as the retired space shuttle that both men flew on and the British sailing ship commanded by James Cook as he explored the Pacific.
At a series of predetermined points along the approach, the spacecraft stops so that mission controllers on Earth can make sure everything is working as planned. At one point, when the Crew Dragon is about 720 feet in front of the space station, the astronauts will try out the manual control of the spacecraft as they continue to approach. This mission is a test flight, and NASA wants to make sure that astronauts would be able to successfully dock the capsule in case of a computer malfunction. “This has gone as well as we could have expected it to go,” Mr. Bridenstine said during a news conference after the docking.
The computer will take over again for the final approach. Once docked, Mr. Hurley and Mr. Behnken will still have to wait a couple of hours for the completion of tests needed to ensure that the seals between the spacecraft and the space station are airtight. Mr. Bridenstine and other officials including President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have offered the successful launch as a hopeful inspiration to serve as a contrast to riots that have followed the death of George Floyd, a black man in Minnesota who died after a policeman kneed on his neck.
Not at the International Space Station. The chances of a damaging collision are small because visiting spacecraft approach the station at very low speeds. But there have been a couple of instances in which the approach systems of spacecraft have malfunctioned. But Mr. Bridenstine agreed that while the SpaceX mission might bring people together, it is not by itself a solution to social unrest.
SpaceX sent Dragon, its crewless capsule that carries cargo, to the space station for the first time in 2012. During that mission, the vessel’s navigation system encountered problems because of stray reflections off one of the station modules. SpaceX engineers reconfigured the system from the ground, and the Dragon made a final approach that allowed it to be grabbed by one of the station’s robotic arms. “If the expectation was that things on the ground were going to change because we launched a rocket, I think maybe the expectation might have been a little high,” he said.
In 2017, another cargo Dragon aborted an approach because of a problem with its GPS system. It successfully approached the station the next day. For now, Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley have an open-ended stay in orbit. The Crew Dragon test flight was originally scheduled to last only a couple of weeks, enabling the astronauts to test out capabilities of the capsule including serving as a shelter in case of an emergency.
In 2019, an uncrewed Russian Soyuz spacecraft on a test flight similarly called off a docking problem because of a problem with its automated system. But it successfully docked on the second try. But there have been delays in completing work on the spacecraft, as well as the another that NASA is depending on for astronaut transportation, Boeing’s Starliner capsule. As a result, the space station is currently short-staffed with only three astronauts aboard — Mr. Cassidy and two Russians, Ivan Vagner and Anatoly Ivanishin — limiting how much scientific research can be conducted.
SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon capsule made its first test flight to the space station last year with no astronauts aboard. After that visit, Russian space officials raised concerns that a possible sequence of malfunctions could put the spacecraft on a collision course with the station. Although the series of events that could cause such an error was unlikely, SpaceX’s engineers made changes to eliminate that possibility for this mission. Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley can also assist with refurbishment tasks like spacewalks to install new lithium ion batteries that just arrived in a Japanese cargo ship.
While the International Space Station has been spared, unintended collisions have occurred at earlier outposts. In 1997, a Russian Progress cargo ship crashed into Mir, the former Russian space station, during a test of the vessel’s manual docking system. That punched a hole in a laboratory module, knocked out power and caused an air leak. With makeshift repairs, the station’s crew was able to keep Mir operating. The Crew Dragon is currently certified for up to four months in space. The spacecraft’s solar panels gradually decay over time, and the worry is that if it is docked too long, the panels would not be able to generate enough power for a safe re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere.
Crew Dragon has never gone to space with humans aboard. That means SpaceX and NASA have a great deal to learn from this trip to orbit. But over the next few weeks, the astronauts will periodically turn on the Crew Dragon and check. If the solar arrays turn out to be more resilient than predicted, the mission could be extended beyond four months.
One of the most important goals of this trip was for the astronauts to get their first try at flying the spacecraft manually when they were still far away from the space station — essentially taking the spacecraft out for a test drive and seeing how it handles to the commands. During the welcome ceremony, Brian Babin, a Republican congressman whose district includes the Johnson Space Center, asked how this flight compared with the astronauts’ earlier trips to space aboard the space shuttles.
They also took a pause during the trip to give the public a tour of the capsule’s interior. Mr. Behnken said that while the shuttles offered a rougher ride getting off the launchpad, the ascent became smoother. “But Dragon was huffing and puffing all the way into orbit,” he said. “A little bit more alive is probably the best way I would describe it.”
Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley also had time to change out of their fancy new spacesuits, eat a meal and sleep. They also promised they’d try out the bathroom. Once in orbit, the spacecraft appeared to smoothly pass all of its tests. “Today, the Dragon is extremely healthy,” said Steve Stich, deputy manager of NASA’s commercial crew program. “There’s really no major problems.
In a video update on Sunday, Mr. Behnken said they were “surprised, I think, at how well we slept aboard the vehicle,” adding that it was quieter than the space shuttle. During Sunday’s docking, the approach of the Crew Dragon proceeded smoothly, about 15 minutes ahead of schedule, with a camera on the space station capturing the red, green and white lights of the capsule as it steadily crept up over the course of a couple of hours. The astronauts took over manual control for a while, firing the thrusters to nudge the position of the spacecraft. They then turned control back to a computer on board for the final steps, leading to docking at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time.
They said they got their first view of the space station from the capsule during the night, and described the results of their manual flight test after their launch. Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley then had to wait close to three hours more as air pressure was equalized between their capsule and the station, tests verified no air leaks and the spacecraft was plugged into the outpost’s power systems.
“The vehicle flew exactly like the simulators,” said Mr. Hurley. “As you are performing your inventory please collect all your food and water bottle trash,” Anna Menon, a SpaceX mission controller in Hawthorne, Calif., reminded Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley before they exited their spacecraft.
Mr. Hurley revealed that he and Mr. Behnken had decided on Endeavour as the name of the capsule. Endeavour was also the name of one of the space shuttles, which in turn was named after the H.M.S. Endeavour, the ship commanded by James Cook as he explored the Pacific.
Each astronaut had his first trip to orbit aboard the space shuttle Endeavour, one of their reasons for choosing the name.
Originally, Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley were scheduled to stay at the space station for only one or two weeks. But those plans were made when NASA thought the mission would fly in 2019. With delays in the development of Crew Dragon and another capsule, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, NASA ran out of available seats aboard Russia’s Soyuz capsule to the space station. It now finds itself short-handed there, with only one NASA astronaut, Christopher J. Cassidy, currently on the station with two Russian counterparts, Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner.
Thus, Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley are now expected to stay at the station at least a month to help Mr. Cassidy and potentially as long as four months.
When only three crew members are aboard the space station, astronauts have time for little beyond the day-to-day work of keeping the station running. That means less time for science experiments or more involved procedures like spacewalks. The presence of Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley will allow more work to be completed.
The two new crew members will also take on specific tasks. Mr. Behnken has trained to perform spacewalks, and Mr. Hurley took refresher classes on how to operate the station’s Canadian-built robotic arm.
When the mission ends, Mr. Hurley and Mr. Behnken will get back into the Crew Dragon and undock. A firing of the thrusters will cause the spacecraft to re-enter the atmosphere. Slowed by parachutes, it will splash down in the Atlantic Ocean, close to where it was launched.
If no major problems arise during this test flight, NASA will use data from this flight to certify that the Crew Dragon is ready for routine flights to the space station. The next Crew Dragon mission — and the first operational one — is to carry four astronauts: three from NASA and one from the Japanese space agency.If no major problems arise during this test flight, NASA will use data from this flight to certify that the Crew Dragon is ready for routine flights to the space station. The next Crew Dragon mission — and the first operational one — is to carry four astronauts: three from NASA and one from the Japanese space agency.
The Crew Dragon is roughly comparable in size to the Apollo capsule that took NASA astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s. Earlier NASA capsules — Mercury and Gemini — were smaller. But Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley got there first.
The inside is far sleeker than what NASA astronauts sat in 50 years ago and even the space shuttles. The computing power available is much greater now, allowing touch screens to replace the buttons and joy sticks that were used in earlier spacecraft. “We were just the lucky guys who got to fly the rocket yesterday,” Mr. Hurley said.
“Growing up as a pilot, my whole career having a certain way to control the vehicle, this is certainly different,” Mr. Hurley said. “So it’s a little bit different way of doing it. But the design in general has worked out very well.”
If you think you’ve got the right stuff to fly a Crew Dragon yourself, SpaceX has provided a web version of the system that the NASA astronauts would use if they needed to override the spacecraft’s automated systems. Some YouTube users have helpfully explained how to actually complete the docking.