A month or two back we experience a landmark event in the
history of space travel. It all went according to the plan on the 27th of May
2020 and we saw for the first time in nine years the launch of astronauts from
American soil going to the International Space Station. The last mission of
this kind was the final NASA space shuttle mission in 2011 before the Space
Shuttle was decommissioned, after which all of the missions to the space
station were launched from Russia on Soyuz Rockets. This new mission is also a
big deal because it's the first crewed mission to the International Space
Station to be run by a private company. SpaceX aren't merely supplying the
rocket and spacecraft to NASA, they're actually running the entire mission as
well. So this really is the beginning of commercial human spaceflight.
In this blog I've tried to summarize everything you need to
know about this mission. This mission is the final test to validate that SpaceX
can deliver astronauts to and from the space station. The astronauts flying
this mission are Douglas G. Hurley and Robert L. Behnken – they're both
veterans of the space shuttle program with two flights each under their belts
and it's very cool for Douglas Hurley because he was the pilot of the final
space shuttle mission and now he's the pilot of the first commercial flight.
They've both come across as being very calm and confident, which is what you
want – if it was me, I would be feeling very anxious. Obviously, everyone's
gone to great lengths to make sure everything's as safe as possible, but
spaceflight is inherently risky and being the first people to sit on top of a
new rocket and get blasted into space is – Well, I can't even imagine what that
would be like. Uh, probably pretty amazing and pretty terrifying.
Let's take a look at the overall
mission:
Another difference to other missions is that the astronauts
will be sitting on top of the rocket while it's being fuelled. In other
missions they fuel the rocket before the astronauts embark. They're fuelling it
with the astronauts on top so that they can launch as soon as the fuel is in
the rocket, which they want to do because they're using cooled propellants –
liquid oxygen and kerosene – which are more effective when they're cold. The
worry is that the rocket could explode during fuelling, which has happened once
but SpaceX have fuelled safely many times and NASA have given it the green
light, so they think it's safe.
After the launch, the first stage of the rocket
separates and comes back to earth to land on a barge, which is an amazing feat
of engineering because this part of the rocket is reusable – It brings the cost
of spaceflight way down for this mission. On the way to the space station the
astronauts will test fly the spacecraft with the manual controls and then
oversee an automatic docking with the space station Then they'll be working on
the space station for two to three months, before flying back down to earth – I
say flying. It's more of a ...controlled falling. This mission is the final test
to prove to NASA that SpaceX can safely deliver astronauts to and from the
International Space Station. They've made lots of cargo deliveries before, but
never transported people.
And to get to this
stage, they've had to pass a whole set
of safety tests shown here:
The pad abort test was to test the escape system to make sure it works properly and this was passed in 2015, but unfortunately in 2019 the escape system rockets exploded during a test, which set the whole schedule back by nearly a year. Fortunately, they fixed the issue at the end of 2019 Retested it and all works okay, and then they successfully tested the escape system in mid-air where they blew up a whole rocket to make sure that the crew capsule could get away from it okay. Back in March of 2019 they ran this whole mission to the space station and back, just without the astronauts on board. And so this mission, taken place on 27th of May, will be the final test to prove that they can safely deliver people to space and get them back safely. If this all works, it's very cool because it's a new, cheaper way to get people into space. And this has all happened because of NASA's Commercial Crew program. This is a NASA program to fund commercial companies to incentivize them to work out ways of efficiently getting into space.
SpaceX is not the only beneficiary of this program, Boeing
also has a spacecraft in the works as well. And so this mission, if successful,
really marks the beginning of commercial space travel and potentially the
beginning of space tourism. In the future a company called Space Adventures is
planning to sell tickets to fly into space beyond the Space Station for
something like 50 million dollars a ticket. And that ticket price is way
cheaper than any seat to space in the past. NASA have also given the go-ahead
to a company called Axiom Space, who are planning to build a commercial space
station in orbit which would also be served by rockets like the SpaceX Falcon
9. But all of these plans hinge on the success of the mission last month, which
is why it feels like a landmark event in space aviation. I'm very excited to
watch it, I'll be there watching it as it happens, but I want to hear from you,
too. Will you watch? and what do you think about this commercialization of
space and space tourism? Do you think it's a good way to fund space science, or
are you generally worried about what all these wealthy people will be doing up
there? Leave me your thoughts in the comments below.
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