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Space engineers jettison cargo7/30/2023 Weigel said NASA is eager to get the suit back so engineers can determine the cause of the leak. NASA has since suspended spacewalks at the station except for contingencies. That includes a spacesuit that suffered a small water leak during a March spacewalk, or EVA, by European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer, causing water to pool on his helmet visor. The spacecraft will bring back about 50 science investigations as well as space station hardware that is being repaired or replaced. “We’ll likely use those on a future mission if the teams determine they’re safe to use for flight.”ĭana Weigel, NASA ISS deputy program manager, said at the prelaunch briefing that NASA plans to keep Dragon at the station for 33 days before undocking and splashing down off the Florida coast. “The initial results from those inspections are coming in and those original parachutes look great,” he said. Reed said that was done as a precaution because hydrazine vapors could have degraded the parachutes. There’s also no sign of any leak on the Crew Dragon spacecraft currently docked to the station on the Crew-4 mission.ĭuring the investigation of this leak, SpaceX decided to replace the parachutes on the spacecraft. “We did look very closely at that,” he said, but didn’t find similar problems on other Dragon spacecraft in the fleet. The issue is isolated to the Dragon spacecraft flying this mission. One involves how to do rework on sealing surfaces for “stricter acceptability.” The company is also incorporating more rigorous testing processes. “Since then we have made updates to our processes,” Reed said. SpaceX found the leak only in “full up” system testing ahead of launch. Initial tests of the propulsion system during assembly did not detect a leak, but may not have been sufficient to detect that leak if it existed at that time. The sealing surface around the valve had been “reworked” but appeared fine, he said. He added the problem was not with the valve itself but with the sealing of joints and unions in the plumbing. “We replaced that valve and then we thoroughly tested the system to confirm that there is no further leakage,” he said. Dragon uses monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide as propellants for its Draco thrusters that handle its approach to and departure from the ISS, and deorbiting at the end of the mission.Īt a prelaunch briefing July 13, Benji Reed, senior director of human spaceflight programs at SpaceX, said the company traced the leak to imperfections in a “sealing surface” where a valve connects into the propulsion system. However, NASA and SpaceX postponed the launch after detecting what NASA called “elevated vapor readings” of hydrazine in the spacecraft’s propulsion system. The CRS-25 mission had been scheduled to launch in early June. “We will use these new measurements to update those Earth system models and bring better fidelity to the Earth system models.” The instrument will also support planning for the Earth System Observatory line of future missions. EMIT will provide far more data on mineral dust than other sensors. “We really need to be able to model how dust interacts with the full Earth system,” said Robert Green, principal investigator for EMIT at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, during a NASA briefing in June. It will be used to study dust mineral dust in the atmosphere and how it interacts with ecosystems globally. That total includes 544 kilograms of equipment located in the unpressurized trunk section of the spacecraft.Īmong the science payloads is an Earth science instrument called the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation, or EMIT, that will be installed on the station’s exterior. The Dragon spacecraft, flying a mission designated CRS-25, is carrying 2,668 kilograms of cargo, including science investigations as well as crew supplies, spacewalk equipment and hardware. ![]() The launch was the 30th so far this year for SpaceX, versus 31 for all of 2021. The stage completed its fifth flight, having previously launched the Crew-3, Crew-4 and CRS-22 missions for NASA and the Turksat 5B communications satellite. The Falcon 9 first stage landed on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean seven and a half minutes after liftoff. The spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the station at about 11:20 a.m. Eastern, deploying the Dragon into low Earth orbit 12 minutes later. WASHINGTON - A SpaceX cargo Dragon spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station after a July 14 launch delayed more than a month by a hydrazine leak on the spacecraft.Ī Falcon 9 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A at 8:44 p.m.
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