{"id":13812,"date":"2018-05-05T18:52:47","date_gmt":"2018-05-05T10:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/reused-dragon-cargo-carrier-splashes-down-in-pacific-ocean\/"},"modified":"2018-05-05T18:52:47","modified_gmt":"2018-05-05T10:52:47","slug":"reused-dragon-cargo-carrier-splashes-down-in-pacific-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/reused-dragon-cargo-carrier-splashes-down-in-pacific-ocean\/","title":{"rendered":"Reused Dragon cargo carrier splashes down in Pacific Ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
The Dragon supply ship departs the space station Saturday during an orbital night. Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev captured this view of the Dragon spacecraft during its departure. Credit: Oleg Artemyev\/Roscosmos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An automated SpaceX supply ship parachuted into the Pacific Ocean on Saturday, bringing more than 3,800 pounds of cargo \u2014 including a NASA robot requiring repair \u2014 back to Earth after a month-long mission at the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

The Dragon cargo capsule splashed down at about 3 p.m. EDT (12 p.m. PDT; 1900 GMT) in the Pacific around 400 miles (650 kilometers) southwest of Long Beach, California, where a SpaceX recovery team was in position to retrieve the spacecraft, pull it onto a boat, and return it to the Port of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

The successful splashdown Saturday marked the conclusion of SpaceX\u2019s 14th resupply mission to the space station under the space transport company\u2019s more than $3 billion, 20-launch cargo contract with NASA. It was the third round-trip cargo flight with a reused Dragon capsule.<\/p>\n

The SpaceX recovery crew planned to return the spacecraft to port by early Monday, hand over time-critical experiment specimens to NASA and other research groups, then transport the Dragon to a facility in McGregor, Texas, for servicing and refurbishment for a possible future mission, according to NASA spokesperson Rob Navias, who provided commentary during the ship\u2019s departure from the space station early Saturday.<\/p>\n

The Canadian-built robotic arm on the space station released Dragon at 9:23 a.m. EDT (1323 GMT) Saturday, and the commercial cargo carrier fired its thrusters to fly a safe distance from the orbiting complex.<\/p>\n

Draco rocket jets on the supply ship fired at 2:06 p.m. EDT (1806 GMT) for a deorbit burn, and the Dragon\u2019s disposable trunk segment detached to burn up during re-entry in Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n

The pressurized component of the Dragon spacecraft, packed with 3,843 pounds (1,743 kilograms) of equipment and research samples, was protected by a heat shield and deployed parachutes to slow its descent.<\/p>\n

Hitching a ride back home with the Dragon was NASA\u2019s Robonaut 2, a humanoid robot launched on the final flight of the space shuttle Discovery in February 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cRobonaut has had some issues with being able to power up on-orbit \u2026 and after a lot of troubleshooting on-orbit and a lot of analysis on the ground, they\u2019ve concluded pretty conclusively that there\u2019s a short of some sort on one of the circuitboards, and they need to bring it home in order to repair that,\u201d said Pete Hasbrook, NASA\u2019s associate space station program scientist, before the Dragon mission\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n

Engineers developed Robotnaut as a testbed to see whether robots could help astronauts clean and maintain the space station, an objective aimed at freeing up crew time for more intensive tasks. A SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule delivered legs for Robonaut in 2014.<\/p>\n

Robonaut could be re-launched on a future mission after the repairs are finished.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe plan is to bring this one down, understand why it failed, and then make the decision of where we want to go in the future,\u201d said Joel Montalbano, NASA\u2019s deputy space station program manager.<\/p>\n

Mice rode back to Earth on Saturday inside special habitats aboard Dragon, and freezers carried biological samples collected on the station for analysis by scientists on the ground.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft\u2019s expendable external cargo bay was loaded with a failed pump flow control subassembly, which regulated the flow of ammonia coolant through the space station\u2019s thermal control system. The pump was tagged for disposal inside the Dragon trunk.<\/p>\n

SpaceX launched the Dragon capsule from Cape Canaveral on April 2, and it reached the space station two days later, delivering 5,836 pounds (2,647 kilograms) of cargo and experiments.<\/p>\n

Dragon\u2019s departure was scheduled for Wednesday, but high sea states in the splashdown zone prompted SpaceX and NASA officials to keep the spacecraft at the space station until Saturday, when a backup landing opportunity was available.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s return of the SpaceX supply ship cleared the space station\u2019s Harmony berthing port for the arrival of an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo craft later this month. The Cygnus resupply mission is scheduled for launch May 20 aboard an Antares booster from Wallops Island, Virginia.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dragon supply ship departs the space station Saturday during an orbital night. Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev captured this view of the Dragon spacecraft during its departure. Credit: Oleg Artemyev\/Roscosmos An automated SpaceX supply ship parachuted into the Pacific Ocean on Saturday, bringing more than 3,800 pounds of cargo \u2014 including a NASA robot requiring repair […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1395,2938,1545,717,1602,311,2969,316],"class_list":["post-13812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-dragon","tag-expedition-55","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-international-space-station","tag-iss-cargo","tag-reusability","tag-robonaut","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}