posted 03-05-2020 10:03 PM               

SpaceX CRS-20 Mission Overview

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the CRS-20 Dragon spacecraft to low Earth orbit to deliver cargo to and from the International Space Station for NASA.

The 20th and last flight under NASA's first Commercial Resupply Services contract with SpaceX, the CRS-20 Dragon will deliver approximately 4,500 pounds (2,000 kilograms) of research, logistics and spare hardware for the Expedition 62/63 crew including:

• Bartolomeo, a new European Space Agency (ESA) facility that will be attached to the outside of the Columbus module to host commercial and institutional payloads;

• Delta Faucet's Droplet Formation Study to the water flow of Delta Faucet's H2Okinetic showerhead technology;

• Adidas' Boost shoe technology to observe the flow of foam particles in microgravity;

• Boston University's Flow Chemistry Platform for Synthetic Reactions on ISS, which will study the effects of microgravity on chemical reactions, as a first step toward on-demand chemical synthesis on the space station;

• Emory University School of Medicine's MVP Cell-03 experiment to study the generation of specialized heart muscle cells for use in research and clinical applications.

The Dragon spacecraft that will support the CRS-20 mission previously supported the CRS-10 mission in February 2017 and the CRS-16 mission in December 2018. This mission will mark the final flight of a first generation Dragon cargo spacecraft. Beginning with CRS-21, SpaceX will switch to using Crew Dragon spacecraft configured to fly cargo.

The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission previously flew on the CRS-19 mission in December 2019. Following stage separation, SpaceX will attempt to recover the Falcon 9's first stage on Landing Zone-1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

The CRS-20 Dragon will return to Earth with more than 4,000 pounds (1,800 kg) of cargo after spending about four weeks at the space station.

posted 03-06-2020 11:10 PM               

SpaceX launches cargo to station on last first-gen Dragon capsule

The final flight of a SpaceX first-generation Dragon capsule is now underway, crowning a decade of launches that began with the world's first orbital mission by a commercial spacecraft.

Poised atop a Falcon 9 rocket, the gumdrop-shaped Dragon lifted off on Friday (March 6) at 11:50 p.m. EST (0450 GMT March 7) from Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The launch marked the start of SpaceX's 20th NASA-contracted mission to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) and its 22nd flight of a Dragon (1) since the first of two demo missions in 2010.

posted 03-09-2020 08:37 AM               

Dragon attached to space station

Expedition 62 flight engineer Jessica Meir of NASA captured SpaceX's CRS-20 Dragon cargo spacecraft on Monday (March 9) at 6:25 a.m. EDT (1025 GMT) using the space station’s robotic arm Canadarm2.

Flight controllers in Houston then sent the commands for the robotic berthing of the Dragon to the Earth-facing side of the space station's Harmony module, which was achieved at 8:18 a.m. EDT (1218 GMT).

This was the last time a Dragon spacecraft was berthed to the space station. Future Dragon spacecraft will autonomously rendezvous and dock with the orbiting laboratory.

posted 04-07-2020 09:09 AM               

Dragon departs space station

SpaceX's CRS-20 Dragon cargo spacecraft, the last of the first generation capsules, was released from the International Space Station on Tuesday (April 7) at 9:06 a.m. EDT (1306 GMT) after flight controllers in Houston used the Canadarm2 robotic arm to unberth the vehicle from the Harmony module.

Splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, 300 miles (480 kilometers) southwest of Long Beach, California, is targeted for approximately 2:50 p.m. EDT (1850 GMT).

posted 04-07-2020 02:22 PM               

Good splashdown of Dragon confirmed, completing the 20th and final International Space Station resupply mission for SpaceX's first iteration of the Dragon spacecraft!