CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—SpaceX aims to launch another load of space-station supplies for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), including a critical docking port needed by new US crew capsules set to debut next year.
The unmanned Falcon rocket is scheduled to lift off early on Monday. Excellent weather is forecast for the 12:45 a.m. launch.
Aboard the rocket is a replica of the docking port destroyed in a SpaceX launch accident last summer. This is port No. 2. Nasa needs at least, one and preferably two, of these ports for crew capsules under development by both SpaceX and Boeing.
Americans have been stuck riding Russian rockets to the International Space Station since shuttles stopped flying five years ago this month. The SpaceX Dragon and Boeing Starliner capsules will ease this Russian dependency.
SpaceX, meanwhile, will try to land its leftover booster back at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, just a couple miles from the Falcon launch pad. The California-based company wants to reuse its rockets to save time and money. It’s only landed a used first-stage booster on land once, back in December. Three other boosters touched down vertically on an ocean platform, after delivering spacecraft to orbit.
SpaceX’s Vice President of Flight Reliability, Hans Koenigsmann said on Saturday the company tplans to launch its first recycled booster this fall.
The SpaceX Dragon cargo ship, meanwhile, holds about 5,000 pounds of food, science experiments and equipment. One-thousand pounds of that is the all-important docking port.
Just ahead of the Dragon, an unmanned Russian Progress spacecraft carrying more than 3 tons of food, fuel and other supplies for the space station crew launched early Sunday in Kazakhstan. The resupply ship is scheduled to dock with the station Monday night, according to Nasa.
For the first time ever, the Nasa press site at Kennedy Space Center will be evacuated for Monday’s launch attempt, as will the neighboring Vehicle Assembly Building and the rest of the former shuttle-launch complex. A risk evaluation by the Air Force shows that the Dragon capsule, full of toxic fuel, could parachute down into this targeted area in the event of a launch failure. The wind is expected to be blowing right in the press site’s direction, thus the evacuation order.
Image credits: Craig Rubadoux/Florida Today via AP