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Archive for August, 2020

August 12, 2020

Starship SN5

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Wikipedia dicit:

The SpaceX Starship is a fully reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX since 2012, as a self-funded private spaceflight project.

The second stage of the Starship — is designed as a long-duration cargo and passenger-carrying spacecraft. It is expected to be initially used without any booster stage at all, as part of an extensive development program to prove out launch-and-landing and iterate on a variety of design details, particularly with respect to the vehicle’s atmospheric reentry.

While the spacecraft will be tested on its own at suborbital altitudes, it will be used on orbital launches with an additional booster stage, the Super Heavy, where the spacecraft will serve as the second stage on a two-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle.

Integrated system testing of a proof of concept for Starship began in March 2019, with the addition of a single Raptor rocket engine to a reduced-height prototype, nicknamed Starhopper — similar to Grasshopper, an equivalent prototype of the Falcon 9 reusable booster. Starhopper was used from April through August 2019 for static testing and low-altitude, low-velocity flight testing of vertical launches and landings in July and August 2019. More prototype Starships are under construction and are expected to go through several iterations. All test articles have a 9 metres (30 ft) of diameter stainless steel hull.

SpaceX is planning to launch commercial payloads using Starship no earlier than 2021. In April 2020, NASA selected a modified human rated Starship system as one of three lunar landing systems to receive funding for a 10-month long initial design phase for the Artemis program.

Video credit: SpaceX

 

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August 11, 2020

Crew Dragon Demo-2 Splashdown

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Wikipedia dicit:

Crew Dragon Demo-2 (officially Crew Demo-2, SpaceX Demo-2, or Dragon Crew Demo-2) was the first crewed test flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. The spacecraft, named Endeavour, launched on 30 May 2020 at 19:22:45 UTC and carried NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken to the International Space Station in the first crewed orbital spaceflight launched from the United States since the final Space Shuttle mission, STS-135, in 2011, and the first ever operated by a commercial provider. Demo-2 was also the first two-person orbital spaceflight launched from the United States since STS-4 in 1982.

Demo-2 was intended to complete the validation of crewed spaceflight operations using SpaceX hardware and to receive human-rating certification for the spacecraft, including astronaut testing of Crew Dragon capabilities on orbit. During their time aboard, Behnken conducted four spacewalks with fellow American astronaut Chris Cassidy to replace batteries brought up by a Japanese cargo vehicle.

Docking and undocking operations were autonomously controlled by the Crew Dragon, but monitored by the flight crew in case manual intervention becomes necessary. The spacecraft soft docked with the International Space Station at 14:16 UTC on 31 May 2020. Following soft capture, 12 hooks were closed to complete a hard capture 11 minutes later. Hurley and Behnken worked alongside the crew of Expedition 63 for 62 days. Endeavour autonomously undocked from the station at 23:35 UTC on 1 August 2020 and returned the astronauts to Earth on 2 August 2020 in the first water landing by astronauts since 1975.

Endeavour will be refurbished and reused for the SpaceX Crew-2 mission, expected to launch in February 2021. Crew Dragon’s next mission, SpaceX Crew-1 — SpaceX’s first operational astronaut flight — is slated to fly with four Expedition 64 astronauts in late September 2020.

Video credit: NASA/SpaceX

 

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August 10, 2020

Atlas V Mars 2020 Launch

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Wikipedia dicit:

Atlas V is the fifth major version in the Atlas rocket family. It is an expendable launch system originally designed by Lockheed Martin, now being operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Lockheed and Boeing.

Each Atlas V rocket consists of two main stages. The first stage is powered by a Russian RD-180 engine manufactured by RD Amross and burning kerosene and liquid oxygen. The Centaur upper stage is powered by one or two US RL10 engine(s) manufactured by Aerojet Rocketdyne and burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. AJ-60A strap-on solid rocket boosters (SRBs) are used in some configurations and will be replaced by GEM-63 SRBs in the near future. The standard payload fairings are 4 or 5 meters in diameter with various lengths.

Video credit: ULA

 

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