A SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule with a parachute went on target on Wednesday night west of Tampa, returning more than two tons of test samples from the International Space Station, including live rodents and a dozen bottles of French wine at the age of space.
The commercial supply vessel, flying on autopilot, crashed out of orbit and entered the atmosphere again over the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday night. A series of paratroopers used to slow down the capsule’s rescue to a very slow speed for a shower west of Tampa, where a SpaceX recovery vessel was nearby to pull the spacecraft from the sea.
They were returned around a 38-day mission for the Cargo Dragon, the first in a new design of SpaceX supply ships to serve the International Space Station. The updated Dragon Cargo, or Dragon 2, replaces the SpaceX fleet of first-generation Dragon cargo capsules, which will fly for the last time in early 2020.
SpaceX confirmed the successful splashdown of the Cargo Dragon with a tweet at 8:28 pm EST Wednesday (0128 GMT Thursday). A NASA WB-57 aerial imagery plane was flying over the recovery zone to capture images of a Cargo Dragon fire reload and spray.
The Cargo Dragon took off from the space station at 9:05 am EST (1405 GMT) on Tuesday, one day later than expected. SpaceX and NASA managers delayed their return home due to bad weather in the main recovery area in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Daytona Beach.
The Dragon returned to Earth with 4,414 pounds, or 2,002 kilograms, of cargo, according to a NASA spokesman.
The new Cargo Dragon capsules come from SpaceX’s human-level Crew Dragon spacecraft, which transports astronauts to and from the space station. The updated Cargo Dragon capsule, like the Dragon Crew, is designed to shower off the coast of Florida, closer to Dragon’s SpaceX refueling facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The level closer to Cape Canaveral allows SpaceX to return time-sensitive goods to NASA’s Canadian Space Center in as little as four to nine hours. Dragon cargo missions ended with splashdowns in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California, and took days to transfer space station research samples to NASA.
The recovery ship “Go Navigator” with SpaceX technologists and engineers was expected to lift the capsule aboard its deck after spraying. The SpaceX team planned to download time-critical science samples and send them by helicopter for an overnight flight to the Kennedy Space Center.
The helicopter will arrive at the Kennedy Launch and Landing Facility, and the cargo will be taken to a nearby Space Station Processing Facility by truck, according to NASA.
Scientists there get the samples to start their analyzes. After a brief look inside Kennedy’s SSPF, some of the materials will be sent to research teams in California, Texas, Massachusetts, Japan, and elsewhere, NASA said.
Science samples return to Kennedy as soon as they return to space returning to the space shuttle program, when missions arrive with direct cargo to a Florida space port.
“I am thrilled to see science return here again as we can bring these time-sensitive experiments into the laboratory faster than ever before,” said Jennifer Wahlberg, manager Kennedy Space Center deployment project, in a statement. “Putting science up to space and then getting it back on the runway was definitely something in the shuttle days we were very proud of, and it’s good to be able to go on it. back in that process. “
Tests that came home aboard the Cargo Dragon included live mice that are part of the Rodent Research 23 study, which examines the function of arteries, veins, and lymphatic structures in the eye and changes in the retina before and after space light, according to NASA.
Scientists are seeking views on whether these changes affect vision. At least 40 percent of astronauts experience visual impairment on long-range space lights, NASA says.
“Rodent Research-23 was designed to begin investigating gravitational recapture responses as soon as possible, making it an excellent candidate for this flight,” said Jennifer Buchli, deputy chief scientist for the International Space Station program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Also on board the Cargo Dragon: Twelve bottles of Bordeaux wine and 320 cuttings of grapes.
The wine bottles spent more than a year on the space station after launching on the Northrop Grumman Cygnus supply ship in late 2019. Now back on Earth, some of the bottles will be opened for a special tasting, while researchers will begin a more scientific study. of some of the wine to determine how it ages after 14 months in microgravity.
Scientists will look at the grapevine branches – called canes – to assess how they passed the radiation weather and low pressure in orbit. One of the goals of the privately funded experiment, led by the Luxembourg startup called Space Cargo Unlimited, is to learn how the plants transitioned to the light weight of space.
Space Cargo Unlimited says grains and winters are prone to climate change, and results from the space station’s experiment could lead to lessons on how to grow grains in harsher environments on Earth.
There was also a biomedical test led by researchers at Stanford University looking at how microgravity affects cardiovascular cells, and a test developed by Japanese scientists showing the growth of organ buds 3D from human cells in space.
Other experiments returned to Earth included a payload led by researchers at Texas State University trying to identify bacterial genes used during biofilm growth. The study examined the feasibility of these biofilms for grinding stainless steel, and evaluated the effectiveness of silver-based disinfectants, to assist long-term spacecraft designers.
Products from the fiber optic production technology show also came home on the Dragon Cargo. Scientists and engineers will study the fiber optic materials made at the space station to see if they match to predict that “fibers made in space have far better properties than those made by the space station. was made on Earth, ”says NASA.
The upgraded Cargo Dragon spacecraft has a larger internal capacity than SpaceX’s first-generation Dragon cargo ship, which made its final mission to the space station in 2020. It also has the power-locking capability of previous Dragon capsules and can support up to 12 such. lockers for return to Earth, increasing the ability to retrieve frozen and cooled samples.
“Using the former Dragon spacecraft, it could take up to 48 hours from the time the capsule hits the water in the Minch until it returns to Long Beach, California . We then started distributing these samples about four to five hours later, ”said Mary Walsh, director of flight use at the Kennedy Office of Research Integration. “We now have early science on hand and turn it into researchers at just four to nine hours after a shower.”
“That ability to quickly recover science is so important for space biology because we want to understand whether the effects we are trying to measure on orbit are due to the microgravity situation or due to the pressure that a partner or sample sees landing, ”said Kirt Costello, NASA ‘s chief space station program scientist. “So it’s a new potential to quickly return those to the Cape and give it to our scientists.”
Other changes introduced by the new Cargo Dragon spacecraft include the ability to dock and deflate automatically at the station. The station’s robotic arm was involved in first-generation Dragon cargo fighters.
The Cargo Dragon-weighted region can be reused five times, according to SpaceX. The non-violent stock is disposable, and a new one will fly on each Cargo Dragon mission.
Before firing at its brake rockets to fall out of orbit, the Cargo Dragon lowered its trunk section to stay in space before pulling an atmosphere back naturally into the atmosphere and firing up. The capsule also closed a nose cone to cover its dock port before diving back into the atmosphere.
The Cargo Dragon launched Dec. 6 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. The capsule reached the space station the next day with an automatic connection with a new docking port on the side of a zenith, or front-end, module Harmony beyond research.
He delivered to the space station several tests and a commercial aircraft for Nanoracks, a Houston-based company that plans to use the add-on to launch small satellites, dispose of garbage, and conduct research studies. .
The Cargo Dragon mission was the 21st SpaceX flight to the space station since 2012 under a multi-million-dollar contract with NASA.
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