NASA and SpaceX decided to delay their upcoming launch to the Inernational Space Station (ISS) for a crewed mission after the pair discovered some additional work that needed to be done on the Falcon 9 rocket. The agency held a teleconference earlier today in which NASA’s director for the Commecial Crew Program, Mr. Steve Stich, shared the work that teams have to perform before the Falcon 9 is ready to take the crew to the station. This includes some work with the Dragon spacecraft and an anomaly that was discovered in the Faclon 9’s engine bay during a recent Starlink flight.
NASA Evaluates Dragon and Falcon 9’s Engines Ahead Of Crewed Flight To Space Station
NASA and SpaceX finished the Crew-6 mission’s flight readiness review earlier today and shared the conclusions at the teleconference. The mission was initially slated to launch on Sunday, but it is now delayed by one day to take off early in the morning on the next day.
Between now and then, NASA and SpaceX have have a couple of items that they have to check off their list before the rocket can fly. One particular issue that sounds concerning is a fire in the engine bay of a Falcon 9 rocket that recently launched 12 satellites. Accoridng to Mr Stich, there was a fire in the rocket’s engine bay which NASA and SpaceX are looking into, with the vehcile currently at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX launched a Starlink mission on February 12 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with a batch of 55 Starlink satellites using a rocket for the 12th time, but it is unlcear whether this is the same rocket present at Kennedy. Most other Starlink launches this year have not used a rocket twelve times.
The Falcon 9 rocket lands on SpaceX’s drone ship on February 12, 2023. Image: SpaceX
Mr. Stich explained that:
On the composite overwrap pressure vessels, these are bottles of helium that are in the liquid oxygen tank in the Falcon 9. We have noticed that there was some blending done in some areas on the liner, and we had some testing and analysis to go make sure those are good for flight and we’ll clear that this week as well. Then finally we continued to analyze the fleet data for all the flights that SpaceX flies including Starlink. There was a recent Starlink flight were there was a little bit of evidence of combustion in one of the engine bays that we’ve gotta go work through. We’re actually inspecting that booster, SpaceX is, it’s at the hangar here and we’re gonna inspect that and try to make sure that there’s clearance for our flight. It was a twelve flight booster and we’re flying a first flight booser on Crew-6 and we’ve gotta get to that work.
He also explained that NASA had discovered some problems with the Draco engines on the Dragon spacecraft. These engines orient the spacecraft with the ISS for it to dock properly, and use a different kind of fuel than the Falcon 9’s Merlin 1D engines. Engineers discovered some spotting inside the engine’s dome and had to replace a throttle valve earlier this year. NASA has cleared both the Draco engines and the Dragon for flight, and loaded propellant on the ship before its launch.
The Super Draco thrusters being installed on the Crew Dragon in October 2019. Image: SpaceX
The space agency also worked on some additional engine problems on the Falcon 9, which related to the rocket’s motion in flight. This problem has also been resolved, but NASA is still left with analysis of the Dragon’s external structure or panels.
According to the official:
During the last crewed flight, on Crew 5, we had a misalignment on the engines, the thrust vector control units for each of the engines, we saw a slight out of family roll rate so we had worked through that and cleared that for flight and we talked about that as one of the special topics today. We are working through a couple of items that we have to clear prior to moving forward for flight and we’ll do that later this week at the program control board. One of those has to do with the pod panel, these are the panels that cover the exterior of the Dragon spacecraft. We have a little additional analysis to do relative to understanding the thermal performance of those pod panels. That will come through in the next couple day, it should close out Thursday at the program control board.
The NASA and SpaceX Crew-6 mission is slated to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on February 27th, Monday at 1:45 am eastern time. It will take four astronauts to the ISS, where they will join Crew-5 before the latter return to Earth. The launch is the first of a rapid cadence of crewed flights to and from the station, which will culminate with a potential launch of Boeing’s first crewed flight in April.
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