{"id":16695,"date":"2015-01-06T19:56:10","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T11:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasa-leaning-on-spacex-to-keep-iss-supply-lines-open\/"},"modified":"2015-01-06T19:56:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-06T11:56:10","slug":"nasa-leaning-on-spacex-to-keep-iss-supply-lines-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasa-leaning-on-spacex-to-keep-iss-supply-lines-open\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA \u2018leaning on\u2019 SpaceX to keep ISS supply lines open"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A
A previous Dragon spacecraft approaches the International Space Station in September 2014. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Dragon spaceship poised for launch Tuesday will carry more than 2.5 tons of equipment for the International Space Station\u2019s six-person crew, making the first U.S. supply delivery to the orbiting research complex since the crash of an Antares cargo rocket in October.<\/p>\n

The space station is not in dire need of supplies, but NASA is eager to stock the complex with provisions, spare parts and experiments to keep the outpost and its crew going.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s launch of the SpaceX-owned Dragon supply ship is the fifth operational cargo mission conducted by the Hawthorne, Calif.-based company since 2012. SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA covering 12 resupply flights through 2016.<\/p>\n

Liftoff of the 208-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket is set for 6:20:29 a.m. EST (1120:29 GMT) from Cape Canaveral\u2019s Complex 40 launch pad.<\/p>\n

If launch occurs on schedule Tuesday, the Dragon supply ship will reach the space station Thursday for capture with the lab\u2019s Canadian-built robotic arm. Once the capsule is attached to the station\u2019s Harmony module, the astronauts will open hatches and begin unpacking the supplies inside.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpaceX-5 is carrying up much-needed cargo the orbiting outpost,\u201d said Mike Suffredini, NASA\u2019s space station program manager. \u201cThe SpaceX folks have worked really closely with us this time. Of all the cargo on-board, we have about 1.8 metric tons (nearly 4,000 pounds) of pressurized cargo. I think that\u2019s the most we\u2019ve crammed into the Dragon to date.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA says the experiments stowed aboard Dragon will support 256 science and research investigations. The cargo includes supplies to support the planned one-year expedition of Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko on the space station, which begins in late March.<\/p>\n

Some of the gear loaded inside the Dragon capsule\u2019s internal cabin will replace equipment lost during the fiery Oct. 28 crash of an Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket at Wallops Island, Va.<\/p>\n

NASA has a separate resupply deal with Orbital Sciences to fly cargo to the space station using its commercial Antares launcher and Cygnus spacecraft. The Antares launcher is grounded while engineers redesign the booster with a new engine, and Orbital\u2019s backup plan is to launch a Cygnus logistics freighter on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in late 2015 to continue executing on its cargo contract.<\/p>\n

Suffredini said NASA shuffled the Dragon spaceship\u2019s cargo manifest to accommodate items that needed to launch in the wake of the Antares launch failure. The changes included the removal of a high-pressure oxygen tank from the Dragon\u2019s supply load to make room for more urgent cargo.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s been with the help of the SpaceX folks who have used quite a bit of ingenuity to put items into all the little cracks and crevasses as we kind of lean on the Dragon vehicle to supply ISS here for the next little while until the Orbital folks are flying again,\u201d Suffredini said.<\/p>\n

Before the Antares failure, space station managers tried to keep the outpost provisioned with food, water, spare parts and other \u201cconsumables\u201d at least six months ahead of time. The cushion allowed the station to keep functioning in case the outpost\u2019s fleet of cargo supply vehicles faced delays or other problems.<\/p>\n

\"NASA,
NASA, SpaceX and U.S. Air Force officials speak to media representatives Monday. Credit: NASA\/Kim Shiflett<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Suffredini said Monday the six-month protection will now be reduced to around four months in order to keep a steady flow of research experiments going up to the space station.<\/p>\n

With the grounding of Orbital\u2019s logistics vehicles and the retirement of the European Space Agency\u2019s Automated Transfer Vehicle \u2014 the station\u2019s largest cargo carrier in the post-shuttle era \u2014 SpaceX\u2019s Dragon capsule and Russia\u2019s Progress refueling and resupply freighter are the two main supply lines between Earth and the orbiting laboratory.<\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s automated H-2 Transfer Vehicle also flies to the space station with supplies, but it only launches about once per year.<\/p>\n

The situation puts the success SpaceX\u2019s resupply missions in the critical path to maintaining the space station\u2019s six-person crew and a feverish research schedule aboard the 450-ton outpost circling 250 miles above Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf something happened to SpaceX, we\u2019d have to figure out where we were and then how quickly they could return to flight, and we would react accordingly,\u201d Suffredini said. \u201cBut without your supply ships, you can\u2019t go on indefinitely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX\u2019s vice president of mission assurance, said the company\u2019s Falcon 9 and Dragon teams are focused on meeting the space station\u2019s need for supplies, even while engineers conduct experiments on booster flyback and reusability.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do expect attention on the first stage maneuvers and landing, but I do want to point out that the main mission is absolutely to get cargo to the station and to make sure that the station supply is steady, stable and reliable,\u201d Koenigsmann said.<\/p>\n

The space station could be operated by three crew members if supplies run thin, Suffredini said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe crew has enough supplies, including research, to continue to work for somewhere between four and six months, depending on what we did,\u201d Suffredini said. \u201cThe decision we\u2019d have to make is how quickly can SpaceX get back up, and then what can we do with our Russian colleagues with regard to any support they might supply \u2026 Then we\u2019d have to look together about, \u2018OK, what are the right steps to take, do we go ahead and let everybody go home until we\u2019re ready to resupply again or do we step down to three crew.\u2019 I suspect that\u2019s what we\u2019d do if we had to \u2014 we\u2019d step down to three crew first.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way we manage (the) station is not to have to make those decisions immediately,\u201d Suffredini said. \u201cWe have quite a bit of resources on-board. We have quite a bit of time to work through a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

A previous Dragon spacecraft approaches the International Space Station in September 2014. Credit: SpaceX The Dragon spaceship poised for launch Tuesday will carry more than 2.5 tons of equipment for the International Space Station\u2019s six-person crew, making the first U.S. supply delivery to the orbiting research complex since the crash of an Antares cargo rocket […]<\/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":[1395,4123,479,717,1602,3964,316,4157],"class_list":["post-16695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-dragon","tag-expedition-42","tag-falcon-9","tag-international-space-station","tag-iss-cargo","tag-mike-suffredini","tag-spacex","tag-spacex-5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16695"}],"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=16695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}