SpaceX commercial rocket blasts off for International Space Station

[Do Do]

Published May 22, 2012
Associated Press

May 22, 2012: The Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off from space launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – A first-of-its-kind commercial supply ship rocketed toward the International Space Station following a successful liftoff early Tuesday, opening a new era of dollar-driven spaceflight.

The SpaceX company made history as its Falcon 9 rocket rose from its seaside launch pad and pierced the pre-dawn sky, aiming for a rendezvous in a few days with the space station. The unmanned rocket carried into orbit a capsule named Dragon that is packed with 1,000 pounds of space station provisions.

It is the first time a private company has launched a vessel to the space station. Before, that was something only major governments had done.

"Falcon flew perfectly!!" SpaceX's billionaire founder, Elon Musk, said via Twitter. "Dragon in orbit ... Feels like a giant weight just came off my back."

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Musk later told reporters: "I feel very lucky ... For us, it's like winning the Super Bowl."

This time, the Falcon's nine engines kept firing all the way through liftoff. On Saturday, flight computers aborted the launch with a half-second remaining in the countdown; a bad engine valve was replaced.

The White House quickly offered congratulations.

"Every launch into space is a thrilling event, but this one is especially exciting," said John Holdren, President Barack Obama's chief science adviser. "This expanded role for the private sector will free up more of NASA's resources to do what NASA does best -- tackle the most demanding technological challenges in space, including those of human space flight beyond low Earth orbit."

Flight controllers applauded when the Dragon reached orbit nine minutes into the flight, then embraced one another once the solar panels on the spacecraft popped open. Many of the SpaceX controllers wore untucked T-shirts and jeans or even shorts, a stark contrast to NASA's old suit-and-tie shuttle crowd.

The hopes of SpaceX employees were riding on that rocket, Musk noted, and everyone felt "tremendous elation."

So did NASA.

The space agency is banking on the switch from government to commercial cargo providers in the U.S., now that the shuttles no longer are flying. Astronauts could begin taking commercial rides to the space station in three to five years, if all goes well.

"The significance of this day cannot be overstated," said a beaming NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "It's a great day for America. It's actually a great day for the world because there are people who thought that we had gone away, and today says, `No, we're not going away at all."'

The real test comes Thursday when the Dragon reaches the vicinity of the space station. It will undergo practice maneuvers from more than a mile out. If all goes well, the docking will occur Friday. Musk will preside over the operation from the company's Mission Control in Hawthorne, Calif., where he monitored the liftoff.

The space station was zooming over the North Atlantic, just east of Newfoundland, when the Falcon took flight.

NASA is looking to the private sector to take over orbital trips in this post-shuttle period and several U.S. companies are vying for the opportunity. The goal is to get American astronauts launching again from U.S. soil -- creating jobs at home and halting the outsourcing, as Bolden put it.

Until their retirement last summer to museums, NASA's shuttles provided the bulk of space station equipment and even the occasional crew member. American astronauts are riding Russian rockets to orbit until SpaceX or one of its competitors takes over the job. Russia also is making periodic cargo hauls, along with Europe and Japan.

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Musk, a co-creator of PayPal, founded SpaceX a decade ago. He's poured millions of his own money into the company, and NASA has contributed $381 million as seed money. In all, the company has spent more than $1 billion on the effort.

Hundreds of SpaceX and NASA guests poured into the launching area in the early morning hours Tuesday, eager to see firsthand the start of this new commercial era. The company had a single second to get its rocket flying, and that's all it needed.

Everyone, it seemed, was rooting for a successful flight -- even Musk's rivals.

"The shuttle may be retired, but the American dream of space exploration is alive and well," said Mark Sirangelo, chairman of Sierra Nevada Corp.'s space systems, which is developing a mini-shuttle to carry space station crews in another few years.

The six space station astronauts were especially enthusiastic. The crew beamed down a picture on the eve of the launch, showing the two who will use a robot arm to snare the Dragon.

In December 2010, SpaceX became the first private company to launch a spacecraft into orbit and retrieve it. That test flight of a Dragon capsule paved the way for this mission, which also is meant to culminate with a splashdown of the capsule in the Pacific.

This newest capsule is supposed to remain at the space station for a week before bringing back experiments and equipment. None of the other types of current cargo ships can return safely; they burn up on the way down.

SpaceX and NASA officials stress this is a demonstration flight and that even if something goes wrong, much can be learned. Two more Dragon supply missions are planned this year, regardless of what happens during this week's rendezvous.

While acknowledging the difficult course ahead in the next few days, Musk and NASA officials savored Tuesday's triumph.

"I would really count today as a success, no matter what happens the rest of the mission," Musk said.

Musk, 40, is the chief executive officer and chief designer for SpaceX. He also runs Tesla Motors, his electric car company.

Hitching a ride into space, aboard the discarded second stage of the rocket, were the ashes of more than 300 people, including Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper and "Star Trek" actor James Doohan, who played Scotty. It's a redo flight for a paying customer, Houston-based Celestis Inc. The Falcon 1 that carried the first batch of their ashes failed in 2008.

[Do Do]

As Dragon capsule splashes down, SpaceX begins to convert skeptics (+video)
SpaceX completed a historic demonstration mission to the space station when its Dragon capsule splashed down safely into the Pacific Thursday. Next up, the real thing.

By Pete Spotts, [Christian Science Monitor] Staff writer
posted May 31, 2012 at 7:00 pm EDT:


The space station's robotic arm releases the SpaceX Dragon capsule Thursday morning.
NASA/AP

The first commercially owned and operated cargo craft to rendezvous and dock with the International Space Station ended its historic nine-day demonstration mission with a perfect spashdown in the Pacific Ocean Thursday morning local time.

Throughout its travels, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation's (SpaceX) Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo craft carried more than cargo to and from space station. The flight also carried the aspirations of a new generation of aerospace companies hoping to expand humanity's access to space.

In many ways, the ambitious mission – though just a demonstration – represented a high-profile test of NASA's new direction. The agency in effect is turning over the keys to low-Earth orbit to the private sector. Under Geroge W. Bush, NASA moved in that direction for cargo. Under President Obama, it has expanded the goal to include humans as well.

RECOMMENDED: Beyond SpaceX: Five companies seeking to change space travel

In each case, NASA is to become a paying customer for transportation services to and from the space station rather than acting as owner and operator of the spacecraft. Meanwhile, the agency is turning its human-spaceflight attention to sending astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit.

The move has been greeted with a great deal of skepticism among some in Congress as well as the space-advocacy community.

But even before Dragon splashed down, the mission's success garnered one new convert.

In an opinion column that appeared May 27 in the Orlando Sentinel, former astronaut and space shuttle commander Mark Kelly noted his initial resistance to the Obama administration's cancellation of NASA's Constellation program, which aimed to replace the shuttle with two rockets – one for crews and light cargo duties, the other for heavy lifting and travel beyond low-Earth Orbit.

“I worried about what it would mean for NASA's overall mission, and what it would do to the brilliant and patriotic men and women who work there,” Mr. Kelly wrote. “But I'm impressed with how far SpaceX has come in 17 months.... The president made a tough, bold decision – and I now believe he was right.”

For now, SpaceX and NASA are savoring the success.

Dragon left the station shortly before 6 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time after station flight engineers Joe Acaba and Don Petitt used the space station's robotic arm to detach Dragon and gingerly position it about 30 feet below the orbiting outpost. At 10:51, it fired its motors in a “deorbit burn” designed to slow the craft by about 200 miles an hour – enough for gravity to exert a stronger tug to begin the craft's descent.

By 11:35 the craft had fallen far enough to deploy the first of two sets of parachutes to further slow its descent. A NASA support plane flew in a racetrack pattern around the landing area, using a infrared camera to spot Dragon and its chutes. Low clouds initially prevented the plane from spotting the craft after it reached the surface. But the pilot dropped beneath the cloud deck and provided visual confirmation that a bobbing Dragon had landed.

“Welcome home, baby,” was the reaction the landing evoked from Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder, chief operating officer, and chief designer, he recalled at a post-splashdown press briefing.

“When you've been deeply involved in the design of a complex machine, when you see it operate, you know all the things that can go wrong,” he said. “There are a thousand ways it could fail, so – this may seem sort of odd – when you see it all work, you're sort of surprised.”

The mission was as much a test of coordination between NASA and SpaceX as it was of hardware.

The Falcon 9 launched from a former Titan missile pad SpaceX leases from the US Air Force at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, with liftoff directed by the company's launch-control center there. Flight controllers operated out of the company's mission-control center in Hawthorne, Calif. Today's recovery of the capsule at sea was conducted by a commercial marine-services company operating out of the Port of Los Angeles.

But Mr. Musk readily acknowledged his debt to NASA for technical support during the evolution of the Falcon 9 and Dragon, as well as for services the agency provided during the mission. For instance, NASA provided vital access to its Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System for communications with Dragon. The company also had to coordinate its operations with the space station's mission-control center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

In many ways, this cooperation is just as historic as SpaceX's technical successes.

SpaceX anticipates it will take two days for the recovery vessels to return to the Port of Los Angeles with Dragon. NASA will be on hand there to take delivery of some of the roughly 1,400 pounds of cargo that Dragon brought back from the space station. SpaceX will then ship the capsule to the company's facility in McGregor, Texas, for further unloading.

“That will complete the formal objectives of this mission,” says Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of NASA's commercial crew and cargo program.

If those final steps are also deemed a success, NASA appears set to give the company the green light to begin regular cargo service to the station under a 12-mission, $1.6 billion deal it signed with the company.

“I don't think it's going to take very long” for final approval of the first operational flight, says Mr. Lindenmoyer.