Crew Dragon by SpaceX Four astronauts successfully docked with the International Space Station yesterday, beginning their six-month mission.
SpaceX officials said in a statement that the docking took place at around 9:16 a.m. ET while the two spacecraft were orbiting over Australia. streaming broadcast.
The journey, dubbed Crew-7, marks SpaceX’s seventh crewed mission to the space station. nasacommercial crew program. This is also the eleventh time SpaceX has sent humans into orbit.
it is as Boeing. — NASA’s other provider of commercial crewed spacecraft — work Getting the long-delayed Starliner spacecraft ready to fly next year. The delay has raised concerns about NASA’s goal of providing multiple lifelines to the International Space Station.
Saturday’s crew was led by NASA astronaut and Commander Jasmin Moghbeli and included Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen European Space Agency, Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov. The crew plans to remain on board before returning in early 2024.
The four astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission, who have lived on the International Space Station since March, will welcome the Crew-7 astronauts next week before returning to Earth in their own Crew Dragon capsule, tentatively scheduled for Sept. 1 .
Viscous valve
NASA and SpaceX had hoped to launch Friday, but opted to cancel the launch a few hours early to spend more time analyzing the dragon’s life support systems.
The Crew-7 launch comes after SpaceX disclosed a problem with sticky valves in previous Dragon flights that could become a problem for Saturday’s flight. During a cargo resupply mission to the space station in June, SpaceX noticed that a specific valve in the Dragon cargo bay remained open throughout the flight. This valve should be left open and only needs to be closed in the event of a propellant leak, so it shouldn’t cause too much of a problem. But if a leak occurs, SpaceX has bigger problems.
After the Crew Dragon returned to Earth after that mission, SpaceX inspected the faulty valve and found evidence of corrosion after sending some of its parts for testing. That prompted the company to start focusing on valves for the entire Dragon fleet.
“We wanted to get to the bottom of it, so we spent about a month looking at the data, and SpaceX was testing different rockets around the country,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said in a release. valve.” A press conference was held before the flight.
Eventually, the company pinpointed the source of the problem. Some of the propellants used by Dragon can mix with excess moisture in the air, creating acids that corrode valves.
Further testing revealed a fix for the sticky valve, SpaceX said. “We found that there is a way that if we actually give the valves a longer period of time, we can actually overcome this corrosion and Restoring valve functionality.” Press release. The company also uses dry nitrogen to remove excess moisture from the system, a solution Boeing uses on the Starliner.
SpaceX also chose to replace some valves on several Dragon ships, including some on Crew-7’s Dragon ship.
Still, SpaceX and NASA are considering long-term solutions to the corrosion problem, as they aim to fly the Crew Dragon spacecraft at least five times each.
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