Orbit

SpaceX Will Dock Dragon With Space Station In Five Months

WASHINGTON, D.C. — NASA and SpaceX have “technically” agreed on a date for the space startup’s first rendezvous with the International Space Station. The SpaceX Dragon capsule will launch aboard a Falcon 9 rocket on 30 November then rendezvous and dock with the ISS on 7 December, almost a year after its first test flight.

The original plan was to rendezvous and dock on separate attempts, but following the groundbreaking and successful first flight SpaceX asked NASA to combine the two missions. “We technically have agreed with SpaceX that we want to combine those flights,” said William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations said at a media briefing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “We are doing all the planning to go ahead and have those missions combined, but we haven’t given them formal approval yet” he says.

A successful docking would be validation of NASA’s plan to replace the now-retired space shuttle fleet with cheaper, private vehicles — though an answer to how the space agency would send astronauts to space remains vague.

SpaceX will charge NASA at least $1.6 billion for 12 cargo shipments to the ISS, or $133 million per flight. The space shuttle costs exceed $1 billion per flight.

Orbital Sciences Corp. also has a contract with NASA to supply cargo ships. And it plans to launch the Cygnus resupply ship into space in February 2012.

The first and second stages of the Falcon 9 rocket for SpaceX’s cargo flight are already at Cape Canaveral. The Dragon spacecraft is due to arrive in August or September, according to Spaceflight Now.

“We’re doing all the planning to go ahead and combine those missions,” Gerstenmaier said. “The capsule is being designed that way and the software is being built that way, and we’re just kind of waiting for the right formal time where we collectively agree that this is the right thing to go forward.”

If successful, these private industry missions will go a long way towards restoring America’s sense of accomplishment in space, left wanting with the retirement of the Space Shuttle.

Tags: Cygnus spacecraft, Dragon, Dragon spacecraft, International Space Station, ISS, NASA, Orbital Sciences, Space, spaceflight, SpaceX