Crew-1 Arrives at International Space Station
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
Four Crew-1 astronauts arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday evening aboard the first commercial flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Crew Dragon Resilience docked at the station’s Harmony module at 11:01 p.m. EST after a 27.5 hour voyage that began Sunday night at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a launch aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
On board the spacecraft were NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi. They will spend six months on ISS.
The four new crew members joined NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov aboard the orbiting laboratory.
It will be the first time the space station has hosted seven astronauts instead of six on a full-time basis. Previously, two three-seat Soyuz capsules were docked at the station.
The extra crew member will double the amount of time devoted to research on ISS. Crew-1 will perform a variety of scientific experiments and demonstrate new technologies in microgravity.
14 responses to “Crew-1 Arrives at International Space Station”
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Has there been any open source discussion about building up an inventory of spacecraft, rescue options, fast turn around capability etc ?
You mean other than the one you started just now? 🙂
Right now, as I understand it, SpaceX has Resilience at ISS, Endeavour in refurb and likely an update and refurb process also in progress – or perhaps even complete – on the thus far nameless Crew Dragon that flew the in-flight abort test. Based on what Shotwell said at the Crew-1 post-launch press conference, the Dragon assembly line in Hawthorne has three more Crew Dragons in various stages of construction alongside several Cargo Dragon 2s. The first of the Cargo Dragon 2s off the line is already at the Cape being prepped for launch in a couple of weeks.
How many of each type SpaceX will eventually build I don’t know. Given that cargo missions tend to fly a bit more frequently than crew missions, perhaps more of the Cargo version will ultimately be built. But if the Cargo version has a simpler and shorter refurb process, which is quite possible, then perhaps the Cargo Dragon 2s will not outnumber their Crew siblings. So a minimum production run of at least six Crew and six Cargo versions seems all but certain.
A half-dozen of each type of Dragon 2 seems likely to be enough to serve ISS clear through its probable end-of-service in 2028 or 2030. But Axiom is already booking private D2 missions and it, and others, will book still more in the years to come.
I suspect the ratio of crew to cargo missions of this type will favor crew as both tourist flights and eventual crew stays in Axiom’s planned ISS augmentation modules are likely to average a shorter duration than the standard 5- or 6-month tours by ISS space agency astronauts. Dragon 2 mission demand of this sort might easily exceed that from NASA, especially after Axiom gets its first ISS add-on module up in 2024. So eventual total production of Crew and Cargo D2s might well be a dozen or more of each.
One item in terms of how production-limited the Dragon 2 launch cadence will be is trunk production as each mission requires a fresh one. Compared to the capsules, though, the trunks seem to be quite simple items. So trunk production seems unlikely to ever be a bottleneck.
Rescue and fast turnaround are sort of joined at the hip. Given that SpaceX already seems to routinely have a refurbed booster or two on hand, the same is likely to prove true of refurbed Crew and Cargo Dragon 2s. For all we know, that Crew D2 that flew the IFA test could now be completely updated, refurbed and waiting patiently in storage to be called up quickly should need arise. Failing any unplanned contingency need arising earlier next year, I suspect that particular craft may be the one that carries the initial Axiom-sponsored foursome to ISS next Fall. Combined with ready availability of freshly-built trunks and F9 2nd stages makes it seem as though putting together and launching an out-of-the-blue rescue or other type of ASAP mission might not take more than a few days.
The X-factor in all such speculations, of course, is how soon SpaceX intends to fly people on Starship. If that happens in time for Maezawa-san to conduct his Dear Moon fly-by in 2023, as notionally scheduled, Starship might significantly impact private demand for D2 going forward.
It’s going to be an interesting next few years.
An excellent and thoughtful rundown. Your writeup needs to be turned into a chart of some sort. Have you already done that?
“Rescue and fast turnaround are sort of joined at the hip”, but I’m going to conjecture that very soon the manned spaceflight office is going to ask for a demo rescue flight with a full preparation of a short notice flight capability and have a trained crew, capsule and booster on hand ready to go. I think the memory of Columbia is still fresh enough in the institution that once the manned program gains its stride the desire for rescue missions to become part of the program will rise to the fore. The difficulties of getting Starliner worked into the program, may very well get in the way of this playing out. No matter what, it will be a great opportunity for the flight ops office to put together. The contractors would love to bid it out, as you can imagine any mix of new or used boosters and capsules to be standing ready. The astronaut corps will love it as they’ll have a elite flight to train and stand ‘quick reaction alert’ on.
Andrew…why would they do this? the space station has in theory self rescue capability
ISS itself is old, and, I maybe be wrong here, but has Soyuz been demonstrated for surge launch yet?
As space boosters go, Soyuz has had both a long production run and a high production rate. The rate is set to decline as fewer Soyuz and Progress capsules will be annually visiting ISS in future. So there would appear to be nothing much to prevent a complete set – or even two or three sets – of Soyuz hardware being held in readiness for quick-reaction rescue missions.
The Russians certainly aren’t going to make any such provisions on their own initiative and dime. If NASA wanted this capability stood up, it would have to pay for it. That seems, to put it mildly, unlikely.
I take “surge launch” to mean two or more launches in quick succession. It’s been over a half-century since Soyuzes were “surge launched.” A pair of Soyuzes were launched one day apart in Jan. 1969 with the capsules rendezvousing and docking on-orbit and two crew members of the first vehicle transferring to the second before both left orbit. An even fancier such mission involving three Soyuzes was launched – again, on successive days – in Oct. 1969, but technical glitches prevented any of the three craft from docking with one another.
I doubt the Russians could repeat such a performance today as there is only one pad in active use for Soyuz manned launches at present. In 1969 there seem to have been at least two.
For what it’s worth, the same would apply to launches of either F9-D2 or Atlas V-Starliner. There is only one pad capable of launching each at KSC-Canaveral. The minimum demonstrated pad turnaround for F9 has been 9 days. For the Atlas V pad, minimum turnaround is about a month. If a rescue mission required more than one launch in close succession, the only way to support that with current or projected facilities would be to use one Crew D2 and one Starliner.
Wasn’t all this dealt with in the Gene Hackman movie “Marooned”? 🙂 I should watch that again. I don’t think I’ve seen it since the 20th cen.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Tucson Az still has a video rental store called Casa Video. They have a great selection movies etc, pop the best popcorn in town and serve local brews. As soon as I finished writing this I decided that Sunday I’m going to go rent “Marooned” the old fashioned way.
https://fantastic-plastic.c…
An interesting idea, but not one, I think, that NASA would be interested in implementing for ISS’s final decade in service, having chosen not to do so during ISS’s first two decades already.
Granted, an aging ISS is more likely to need some sort of rescue mission in its dotage than it did in its vigorous youth. But the most likely scenario for significant ISS emergency is probably some structural failure on the Russian segment. Any such failure that didn’t produce prompt casualties could be dealt with in the short term by just moving the Russians into the non-Russian part of the station. Under such circumstances, there might be a need to launch an unplanned mission to temporarily reduce the total crew size a bit, but even that might not be necessary after the first Axiom module is attached in 2024.
agreed…nice summation
I did not think that the crew dragons were reusable? Have I missed something?
Both the Crew and Cargo D2s can be reused at least five times each.
thank you so much https://disq.us/url?url=htt…