SpaceX and NASA again made history by successfully completing the crucial final phase of its mission Demo-2. Crew Dragon, the first spacecraft SpaceX, designed for human flight, returned to earth after the launch on may 30, when NASA astronauts Bob Behnken (Bob Behnken) and Doug Hurley (Hurley Doug) was delivered to the ISS, where he spent the last two months.
Crew Dragon, apparently, worked without incident the entire mission: launch, docking with the ISS, undocking, reentry and landing in a fully automated mode. The astronauts remained safe throughout the flight. The final stage included the splashdown capsules Behnken and Hurley in the Gulf of Mexico – they have picked up a rescue ship SpaceX GO Navigator.
Good of Dragon splashdown confirmed! Welcome back to Earth @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug! pic.twitter.com/0vAS3CcK9P
– SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 2, 2020
Upon successful completion of this mission will be done to provide fully certified Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 in accordance with the standards of NASA: the whole mission will be dismantled to pieces from beginning to end, and all identified deficiencies SpaceX will have to eliminate. But certification is unlikely to encounter any serious obstacles, judging by the way passed the mission Demo-2.
It should be noted that it was also the first splashdown of an American spacecraft for 45 years – last time it did the crew of the space station USA Skylab in 1974, while the “Shuttle” landed on a special runway.
The next step for Crew Dragon should become a regular delivery of U.S. astronauts to the International space station and returning them to the Earth: after the closure of the Space Shuttle program, Americans were used for this purpose services of Russia. The first of these missions, called “Crew-1” (Crew-1) must be held somewhere in late September: in the framework of the ISS will be delivered three cosmonauts of NASA, and one JAXA (Japan). By the way, potentially Crew Dragon can lift into orbit up to 7 people at a time.
SpaceX became the first private commercial company, which delivers people into orbit. The next one will probably be Boeing. The last is developing the partially reusable manned Cockpit in the framework of the development of commercial manned space vehicles, organized and funded by NASA.
Broadcast the moment of landing watched on NASA channel on YouTube at the same time about half the audience:
In addition, in a separate article you can find out more about how SpaceX and came up with this planting scheme, what are the alternatives and how will it change the procedure for the return of astronauts in the future.