Le cargo américain Dragon se sépare de l'ISS (video)

Le cargo privé Dragon s'est séparé mardi à 19h10 UTC du module américain Harmony de la Station spatiale internationale (ISS), a annoncé la NASA.


Le vaisseau de transport tombera dans le Pacifique, à l'ouest de la Californie, six heures plus tard, mercredi vers 00h44 UTC, ramenant sur Terre 1,5 tonne de fret, principalement des résultats d'expériences scientifiques réalisées en orbite.

Dragon a décollé le 10 janvier dernier. Il s'est arrimé à l'ISS deux jours plus tard, transportant plus de 2 tonnes de fret en orbite.

Le cargo Dragon est actuellement le seul vaisseau spatial capable de ramener des cargaisons sur Terre. Il s'agit du cinquième des douze vols prévus par un contrat passé entre la société américaine SpaceX, conceptrice de la capsule Dragon, et la NASA en décembre 2008.

Le premier vol commercial d'un Dragon s'est officiellement tenu en octobre 2012. En mai 2012, ce vaisseau de transport est devenu le premier cargo privé à s'arrimer à l'ISS.
[sputniknews.com]
10/2/15
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Related:

• US Dragon Spacecraft Blasts Off to ISS, Falcon 9 Rocket Landing Fails

• The American cargo spacecraft Dragon that was launched last Saturday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to the International Space Station (ISS) is to dock with the orbiting station on Monday...

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SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft arrives at space station

The unmanned Dragon capsule owned by private U.S. firm SpaceX arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday morning for its fifth commercial resupply mission to the orbiting laboratory, U.S. space agency NASA said.

The spacecraft was successfully captured by a robotic arm operated by U.S. astronaut Barry Wilmore inside the ISS at 5:54 a.m. EDT (1054 GMT), 18 minutes ahead of schedule, as the two flew over the Mediterranean Sea, NASA said.

Dragon, which was launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket on Saturday, carried about 2.5 tons of supplies and payloads, including materials to support 256 scientific experiments in space.

The scientific payloads included an instrument that will evaluate the clouds and tiny particles in the Earth's atmosphere to potentially decipher important clues for climate change and aid in weather forecasting on the Earth.

The spacecraft is also loaded with several biological experiments that will take advantage of the microgravity environment unavailable on the Earth to advance medical knowledge.

• One of the projects will study fruit flies' immune systems as a model for the human immune system, to explore how spaceflight can make organisms more susceptible to disease, especially since microbes can become more virulent in space.

• Another project will grow proteins inside a 10-centimeter cube in weightlessness to research a suspected cause of Alzheimer's and similar brain ailments in people.

Dragon will remain connected to the ISS for more than four weeks before departing for a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of California.

This is the fifth operational cargo delivery mission for SpaceX to the ISS. The company's 1.6-billion-U.S.-dollar contract with NASA requires at least a dozen cargo delivery flights in all.

Besides SpaceX, NASA has also signed a deal with another private company called Orbital Sciences Corp. to supply cargo to the ISS.

Orbital's first two flights went smoothly, but the third failed when the company's Antares rocket exploded seconds after liftoff in late October. 
 Xinhua - china.org.cn
12/1/15
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Related:

• US Dragon Spacecraft Blasts Off to ISS, Falcon 9 Rocket Landing Fails

• SpaceX launches cargo ship but rocket recovery test ends in crash ...

• The American cargo spacecraft Dragon that was launched last Saturday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to the International Space Station (ISS) is to dock with the orbiting station on Monday...

US Dragon Spacecraft Blasts Off to ISS, Falcon 9 Rocket Landing Fails

The US spacecraft Dragon with 1.6 tons of supplies for the International Space Station (ISS) was successfully launched Saturday from Cape Canaveral in Florida, NASA said on its website.

The Dragon spacecraft was brought into the orbit by the Falcon 9 carrier-rocket. After completing the task, the first stage of the carrier-rocket was expected to land on a huge platform installed in the ocean off the coast of Florida.
According to US media reports, Falcon 9 crashed into the platform and broke into pieces, making it impossible to use the rocket in the future.

• The first stage of SpaceX's Flacon 9 rocket failed to make a soft landing at the ocean platform after separating from the spacecraft Dragon, chief executive of SpaceX private developer said Saturday.

"Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship, but landed hard. Close, but no cigar this time. Bodes well for the future tho. Ship itself is fine. Some of the support equipment on the deck will need to be replaced," Elon Musk said via Twitter.
Musk earlier stated that in case of successful landing, his company would be able to use the rocket's booster stage multiple times, which would change the economics of space flights completely.....................http://sputniknews.com/science/20150110/1016737710.html
10/1/15
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Related:

• Launch of Dragon supply ship to ISS postponed due to bad weather (NASA)

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• La nave estadounidense Dragon parte hacia la Estación Espacial Internacional ...

• Un cargo privé américain Dragon décolle vers l'ISS ...

• SpaceX on Saturday (Jan 10) blasted off its Falcon 9 rocket on an historic recycling mission, after propelling the Dragon cargo ship toward the International Space Station...

Launch of Dragon supply ship to ISS postponed due to bad weather (NASA)

The launch of the American resupply spaceship Dragon to the International Space Station (ISS) has been postponed due to the bad weather conditions.

“Launch of SpaceX's fifth resupply mission to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida was scrubbed for this morning,” NASA reported on Tuesday. Cargo on board the Dragon spacecraft includes supplies, science investigations and NASA's CATS instrument.

Another launch attempt will be made at 05:09 am, local time (13:09, Moscow time) on Friday.

The Dragon spaceship marks SpaceX’s fifth resupply mission to the ISS under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to deliver 20,000 kg (44,000 pounds) of cargo to the station during a dozen Dragon cargo spacecraft flights through 2016 under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.

The unmanned cargo freighter is loaded with more than 5108 pounds (2317 kg) of scientific experiments, technology demonstrations, crew supplies, spare parts, food, water, clothing and assorted research gear for the space station.
[itar-tass.com]
6/1/15
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Related:

• La NASA suspende el lanzamiento de la nave Dragon ...

• Malfunction in Booster Causes Suspension of Dragon Spacecraft Launch: NASA ...

Roscosmos suggests starting the creation of moon base elements and exploration robots

MOSCOW, August 11, /ITAR-TASS/. Russia's moon exploration plans have found reflection in a draft Federal Space Programme (FSP) for a 2016-2025 period, worked by the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos). The draft FSP envisions that already in 2018 work will be started to develop the elements of a moon base and special-purpose technology that will be required for building it, the newspaper Izvestia writes referring to the document a copy of which it has available.

Izvestia quotes the draft Programme as pointing out that "The 'Manned Flights' avenue of research includes projects to bring into being an on-ground development complex as the prototype of a first-phase moon base consisting of four modules (habitation, laboratory, power, and modernised node) for comprehensive linkage and verification of the adopted architectural and technical solutions".

The draft Programme also presupposes that a mobile manipulator crane, a grader, an excavator, a cablelayer, and a mobile robot for lunar surface exploration will be created and tested for building a luna base.

According to the newspaper's data, the financing of a number of research and experimental design operations at the moon base is supposed to be started in 2018. In all, Roscosmos requests the allocation of 10.37 billion roubles within a period till 2025 inclusive for the implementation of the works.

Roscosmos staff prefer not to comment on the FSP, the paper specifies.

• It was Vice-Premier Dmitry Rogozin who stated in April of the current year that Russia, in prospect, intends to start the colonization of the Moon.

A source at the United Space Rocket Corporation told Izvestia that it is too early now to comment on detailed contents of the draft FSP, for the document is yet to be edited.
http://en.itar-tass.com/non-political/744354
11/8/14
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Related:
 

• Reusable moon lander

• Russia Designs New Spaceship

Russia Designs New Spaceship

MOSCOW, December 26 (RIA Novosti) - Russian space rocket corporation Energia has completed the technical design of a new manned spacecraft whose flight tests are due to begin in 2017, Energia President Vitaly Lopota said on Wednesday.
“We have completed the technical design project taking into account the fact that the new spaceship is to fly to the Moon, among other places,” he said.
Energia won the spaceship design tender in April 2009.

Federal Space Agency Roscosmos head Vladimir Popovkin earlier said the new spaceship will be created by 2018 and will be able to fly not only to the International Space Station (ISS) but also to the Moon.
There will be several spacecraft modifications depending on whether the flight will use a terrestrial or lunar orbit, or carry out in-flight repair and maintenance of other spacecraft and the deorbiting of malfunctioning satellites and large fragments of space debris.
Earlier on Wednesday Lopota rejected as a “non-market” measure the idea of establishing an engine holding company in the domestic space industry.
Popovkin previously said Russia planned to create a single holding company for booster rocket production to integrate the country’s leading space vehicle producers Khrunichev and TsSKB Progress, and also an engine-building sub-holding company to include engine makers Energomash, the Khimavtomatiki design bureau, the Voronezh mechanical works, Proton PM and other firms.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered the government in summer to work out a plan to improve Russia’s space industry organizations, after a string of mishaps that he said have compromised Russia’s image as a leading space power.
In the most recent failure on August 7 Russia’s Proton carrier rocket launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan failed to deliver two satellites onto their designated orbit because of a suspected mishap in the engines of its Briz-M booster.
.en.rian.ru
26/12/12