National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
SpaceX plans to splash down the Dragon crew and cargo capsule in the Pacific Ocean sometime next year, then complete recovery of the spacecraft off the coast of Florida.
This will allow SpaceX to change the way it returns Dragon to Earth, eliminating even the smallest risk that debris could fall off the spacecraft’s belly and cause damage, injury or death to anyone.
“Five years after splashdown off the coast of Florida, we’re moving Dragon recovery operations back to the West Coast,” said Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s Dragon mission management director.
Public Security
Over the past few years, landlords Discover the remains of the Dragon Mission All of the debris found on their property was from the trunk of the spacecraft, the unpressurized section at the back of the capsule that carries astronauts and cargo on flights to and from the International Space Station.
SpaceX returned Dragon’s first 21 cargo missions to splashdowns in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Los Angeles. When an upgraded crewed version of Dragon began flying in 2019, SpaceX shifted splashdown locations to the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico to be closer to the company’s refurbishment and launch facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Benefits of landing closer to Florida include faster delivery of astronauts and time-sensitive cargo to NASA and shorter turnaround times between missions.
The previous version of Dragon, known as Dragon 1, detached its fuselage after the deorbit burn, which fell into the Pacific Ocean. For the new version of Dragon, called Dragon 2, SpaceX changed the re-entry profile to jettison the fuselage before the deorbit burn. This meant that after each Dragon mission, the fuselage would remain in orbit and the capsule would re-enter the atmosphere on a guided trajectory. The fuselage, which is made of composite materials and has no propulsion system, typically takes weeks or months to re-enter the atmosphere, and the company has no control over where or when it re-enters.
Drag from the thin upper atmosphere gradually slows the trunk down and knocks it out of orbit. The amount of drag the trunk experiences is determined primarily by variations in solar activity.
SpaceX and NASA, who funded the Dragon spacecraft heavily, initially assumed that the trunk would burn up completely upon re-entry into the atmosphere and would not survive re-entry and cause injury or property damage. However, this turned out not to be the case.
In May, a 90-pound piece of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft lifted off from the International Space Station. Falls on the grounds of a “glamping” resort At the same time, a homeowner in a nearby town Small pieces of material This also appears to be from the same Dragon mission.
These events followed the discovery of about 90 pounds of debris from the Dragon capsule on a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada, in April. SpaceX and NASA subsequently determined that the debris had fallen from orbit in February, and SpaceX employees arrived at the farm earlier this month to retrieve the debris. According to CBC.
Pieces of the Dragon spacecraft also fell in Colorado last year, and in 2022, an Australian farmer discovered remains of the Dragon spacecraft on his land.
