CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida. SpaceX, Dragon spacecraft stands inside a processing hangar at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. ...
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida.
The second SpaceX mission to the International Space Station under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract is scheduled to launch Friday, March 1, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
The company's Falcon 9 rocket carrying its Dragon cargo capsule will lift off at
10:10 a.m. If needed, a backup launch opportunity is available on March 2 with launch time at 9:47 a.m.
The mission is the second of 12 SpaceX flights contracted by NASA to resupply the space station. It will mark the third trip by a Dragon capsule to the orbiting laboratory, following a demonstration flight in May 2012 and the first resupply mission in October 2012.
The capsule will be filled with more than 1,200 pounds of scientific experiments and cargo. It will remain attached to the space station's Harmony module for more than three weeks.
The Dragon capsule will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California on March 25, returning more than 2,300 pounds of experiment samples and equipment, which will be recovered for examination by scientists and engineers.
The first CRS flight for SpaceX occurred last October and though successful, a malfunction shut down one of the Falcon rocket’s nine engines shortly after launch. For the past several months SpaceX engineers have been analyzing the data from the CRS-1 flight and the company says it’s found the cause of the engine shutdown.
The other eight engines were unaffected, highlighting one of the key features of the Falcon 9′s redundant design where a single engine failure does not end the mission.
Though because of the longer burn required of the eight engines to achieve a proper altitude, a restart of the second stage was deemed not possible for safety considerations involving the ISS, and a secondary payload satellite on the flight did not reach its proper orbit.
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| SpaceX, Dragon spacecraft stands inside a processing hangar at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Teams had just installed the spacecraft's solar array fairings. Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett |
The company's Falcon 9 rocket carrying its Dragon cargo capsule will lift off at
10:10 a.m. If needed, a backup launch opportunity is available on March 2 with launch time at 9:47 a.m.
The mission is the second of 12 SpaceX flights contracted by NASA to resupply the space station. It will mark the third trip by a Dragon capsule to the orbiting laboratory, following a demonstration flight in May 2012 and the first resupply mission in October 2012.
The capsule will be filled with more than 1,200 pounds of scientific experiments and cargo. It will remain attached to the space station's Harmony module for more than three weeks.
The Dragon capsule will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California on March 25, returning more than 2,300 pounds of experiment samples and equipment, which will be recovered for examination by scientists and engineers.
The first CRS flight for SpaceX occurred last October and though successful, a malfunction shut down one of the Falcon rocket’s nine engines shortly after launch. For the past several months SpaceX engineers have been analyzing the data from the CRS-1 flight and the company says it’s found the cause of the engine shutdown.
The other eight engines were unaffected, highlighting one of the key features of the Falcon 9′s redundant design where a single engine failure does not end the mission.
Though because of the longer burn required of the eight engines to achieve a proper altitude, a restart of the second stage was deemed not possible for safety considerations involving the ISS, and a secondary payload satellite on the flight did not reach its proper orbit.
