SpaceX CRS-9 Carrying Crucial Port to Station
The second International Docking Adapter. (Credit: NASA)
By Steven Siceloff,
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida
A metallic ring big enough for astronauts and cargo to fit through is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station in July as part of the cargo aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft loaded with materials for the orbiting laboratory and its crew. The ring is known as an International Docking Adapter, or IDA, and its main purpose is to provide a port for spacecraft bringing astronauts to the station in the future.
The Dragon and its cargo will fly into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will take about 10 minutes to lift the spacecraft from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to an orbit to catch up with the station. It will take about two days for the Dragon to reach the station. Once within reach of the station’s robotic arm, the Dragon will be berthed to the orbital complex by the astronauts already on the station.
Outfitted with a host of sensors and systems, the adapter is built so spacecraft systems can automatically perform all the steps of rendezvous and dock with the station without input from the astronauts. Manual backup systems will be in place on the spacecraft to allow the crew to take over steering duties, if needed.
“It’s a passive system which means it doesn’t take any action by the crew to allow docking to happen and I think that’s really the key,” said David Clemen Boeing’s director of Development/Modifications for the space station.
The IDA stands about 42 inches tall and is 63 inches in diameter on the inside. Sensors and other fittings ring the perimeter of the adapter and give it an overall diameter of about 94 inches. Spacecraft flying to the station will use the sensors on the IDA to track to and help the spacecraft’s navigation system steer the spacecraft to a safe docking without astronaut involvement.
The adapter also represents the first on-orbit element built to the docking measurements that are standardized for all the spacecraft builders across the world. Its first users are expected to be the Boeing Starliner and SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft now in development in partnership with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Because the adapter is designed to an international standard, future spacecraft will be able to dock there, too.
“It’s really good we have an international standard now that anybody can build against and come dock to the station or to anything that has the same standard,” Clemen said.
The companies are competitors in delivering astronauts to the station, but they both play a large role in the IDA project, with Boeing having built the docking port and SpaceX ferrying it into orbit.
The IDA is comprised of parts from 25 states in the United States. The main element was built by Russian company RSC-Energia, which built the primary structures of the adapter.
While the crew will be able to move the supplies out of the interior, pressurized compartment of the Dragon without leaving the station, the robotic arm will be called on to pull the IDA from the trunk and maneuver it near the port where it will be connected. NASA astronauts currently living aboard the station will perform a spacewalk later this summer to make the final connection of the IDA to the Harmony module.
This adapter will be one of two at the station. Another already being assembled at Kennedy will be carried into orbit during a future SpaceX cargo resupply mission and attached to another open port on the station, giving the station two docking areas for the new generation of human-rated spacecraft. Both of the IDAs are identical.
With the IDA loaded in the rear trunk of the Dragon, the interior of the spacecraft will hold about 3,800 pounds of material including experiment supplies for dozens of the 250 research projects taking place on the station during Expeditions 48 and 49. The payloads are vital elements for the crew on the station to conduct its research for those on the Earth as well as to help advance the knowledge needed for a future journey to Mars by astronauts.
Included in the payload is the TangoLab-1, a research rack that will run small-sized experiments in orbit in a wide range of scientific fields. The rack is tailored to self-contained research that can be accomplished inside canisters about the size of a tissue box. The rack can hold two dozen experiments at once and those can be changed out for fresh research with each arriving cargo spacecraft. According to Space Tango CEO Twyman Clements, the lab is meant to give researchers a new avenue to conduct science affordably in orbit.
“We specialize in doing really complex work in really small space,” Clements said. The idea to design the lab to uniform canister sizes came about from the company’s work in CubeSats and space station projects. “This way we don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time” for a new experiment.
25 responses to “SpaceX CRS-9 Carrying Crucial Port to Station”
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Fingers crossed that all goes well this time!
What’s also good to keep in mind, Aerospike, is that even if there is another catastrophic failure with the launcher, SpaceX has adjusted the Cargo Dragon’s avionics so that the braking shutes will deploy as it falls back towards Earth. Handy to have that extra insurance. Regards, Paul.
Though that would not save the IDA, and the capsule surviving a failure intact is very unlikely. Still, a nice-to-have for when the odds align.
Hope that we do not have to find out how good capsule is.
It would check the box on that assent abort test. 🙂
nice thought, but they are sending up the dragon 1, not 2.
Picky picky.
The IDA rides in the trunk, which gets jettisoned from the Dragon during an abort. Or otherwise it couldn’t land with it intact (or at least it probably hasn’t been tested).
And even if it could, it would be a rough ride, and NASA would not certify a part that has gone thru an “incident”.
This would only save the pressurized cargo in the capsule. The trunk where the docking adapter is located would be jettisoned. When Falcon 9 blew up last year, you could see the capsule — minus the truck — tumbling through the cloud.
That’s exactly what I was going to say. If we lose this one, it will delay testing of commercial crew vehicles, since there won’t be a compatible docking port without it.
Yes, they lose this adapter, and you might as well just cancel the funding for commercial crew for the remainder of the year. Perhaps they can take 500 mil of funding from SpaceX and give it to Boeing to rush the manufacture of yet another adapter. They we need to contract with the Europeans or Japanese for a vehicle to get the external payload to the ISS reliably.
Commercial Crew could go forward – they both still have quite a lot to do – perhaps even with the unmanned flight tests, but the docking with the ISS tests would have to wait until late 2017 when IDA-3 is scheduled to be sent up to the ISS.
But you certainly wouldn’t trust SpaceX to deliver IDA-3 or 4 if they lost this one.
Why not?
Also, SpaceX is the only one who can, unless a dedicated launch vehicle is secured for just the IDA, though that would also entail designing and building a small tug just for the purpose of getting the IDA to the ISS. No other nation or launch services provider has a large enough un-pressurized payload capacity for the IDA.
Because, after losing 2 adapters, SpaceX will have proven themselves incapable of delivering the IDA to the station. You might as well pay someone else to deliver the unpressurized cargo to the station.
Try not to be too disappointed when CRS-9 arrives safe and sound.
Nobody else is capable of delivering it to the ISS.
At the risk of introducing a note of realism into your paranoid imaginings, what makes you think SpaceX is likely to lose a second IDA, never mind a third or fourth? The problem that caused the loss of the first one has been fixed and several subsequent missions – most with far more strenuous ascent profiles than a CRS mission, but one of which was another CRS mission – have gone off without a hitch. Are you under the impression that there is some hex or curse associated with IDA’s that causes SpaceX rockets to fail when one is aboard? Evil spirits?
Since SpaceX has announced that the first Barge landed Booster will fly again this fall SpaceX will have 2 Boosters definitely, that can fly again come Monday Morning 🙂
Still curious of the health of the two hotter GEO landing boosters.
More progress
Since the IDA is based on the Soyuz docking system. In theory you could dock the Dragon or Starliner on the Russian side of the ISS. Since there will only be one Soyuz docked.
No, that’s not true. The IDA is International Docking System Standard compatible, but the Russian docking ports are not.
From what I understand another adapter is going to be manufactured, but I’m unsure when it would be ready for launch, presumably in the trunk of another Dragon.
IDA-3 is being made from spare parts from the first two IDA builds. Only a few parts needed to be manufactured again. IDA-3 is currently slated for SpaceX CRS-14.
Indeed! The lost launch last time carried unusually valuable supplies. A space suite and a hard to replace life support upgrade. Besides a copy of this docking port.
SPX said they will make use of the Dragon launch abort ability (parachutes rather than rockets I suppose on cargo launches) in the future, to soft land the payload in the sea if the launch fails. Has this now been implemented?
Yes.