At the beginning of 2020, a privately owned company had never launched humans into space
before. Now? SpaceX is gearing up to do it for a third time.
Its next mission to the International Space Station, known as Crew-2, is with the company’s
most seasoned team yet and also its most international. Crew-2 is made up of four members in total;
two NASA astronauts; Mission commander, Shane Kimbrough, and pilot Megan McArthur, and mission
specialists Thomas Pesquet from ESA as well as Aki Hoshide from JAXA. Although this will
be McArthur’s first duration on the ISS, each member of the team has flown multiple
times on previous missions including the Space Shuttle, and Soyuz spacecraft. Building on
their collective expertise, they’ve been able to approach the SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule
and training program with thoroughness and excitement. Even if it’s a little different.
So comparing the Crew Dragon with the space shuttle training, obviously, the vehicles
have a lot of differences, even though their goal is the same to get people into low Earth
orbit. With Crew Dragon. Of course, we don't have those panels and panels of switches,
we have a very clean wall environment.
It's like a smartphone, I would say, compared to the old telephone.
And even though the team is experienced and
most of the Crew Dragon controls are automatic, it’s still a brand new spacecraft with lots
to get used to.
You need to know all the systems, to be able
to fix them and to understand how they work. You train in the SIM, then you train on your
spacesuit, and then you train with those scenarios from benign to more, more difficult, then
at the end you really have to you know react to a fire or launch abort, and all the contingency
that could happen and at you have to be prepared for.
All this training becomes important not only for their safety, but remember these are still
early days for commercial human spaceflight.
This is only the third human
flight of this vehicle, right. So when we get into the range and we've flown, you know,
I don't say, put a number on it 30 to 50 times, then I think things will be more routine,
I think they're all pretty much test flights still until you get, a lot more data points
to be able to compare. The NASA and SpaceX teams have certainly looked at what happened
on demo two and changed things and made it better for crew one. And then we're getting
data from crew one already on the launch site, and they're working on better fixes for that,
And SpaceX is working diligently with those
changes. The Crew-2 team will actually be launching on the Crew Dragon Endeavour, which
is the same one that was launched during the Demo-2 mission in May of 2020 with Doug Hurley
and Bob Behnken, who happens to be McArthur’s husband, how cool is that?
It is amazing to think that I will be sitting in the same seat that Bob was sitting in when
he certified that vehicle, the very first time that it launched. But that certainly
adds a little something special to the mission.
Since then, the SpaceX team has made some
tweaks to Endeavour, starting with the thermal protective system, adding some new parachutes,
and increasing the propellant on the pad abort system. The extra fuel will improve the safety
systems of the capsule which allow it to launch off the Falcon 9 rocket and maneuver itself
away if there’s an emergency. Crew-2 will launch out of NASA’s Kennedy
Space Center and will be in orbit for about a day before it docks with the ISS and when
it does, it will be filled with 11 people in total. Crew-2 AND Crew-1 will be aboard
the station at the same time. Although it will be cramped space lasting roughly a week,
the crews are taking advantage of the extra set of hands. They’ll start conducting scientific
research such as ultrasound testing and watching cotton grow in microgravity. The crew will
also be responsible for installing the station’s new solar arrays which will increase the station's
total power from 160 to 215 kilowatts. Crew-2 will be able to return home in 6 months.
A flight like this from the three space agencies hasn’t been made in 20 years. It may not
seem like a big deal, but international collaborations like these are important.
It makes things more complicated. Yeah, we don't speak the
same language. We don't have those same priorities all the time. in the end, it makes you better,
it makes you achieve more.
Looking ahead to the Moon and Mars. I
think we need to continue this international cooperation because a single country can just
cannot do it alone.
It's also true on this global level, that
we have these big dreams, where we look out, you know, to the horizon, and this desire
to explore the universe around us. And we're always going to be more successful when we
work together with our international partners to achieve these incredible dreams.
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