WASHINGTON — SpaceX will move the splashdown site of its Dragon spacecraft from off the coast of Florida to the West Coast starting in 2025. The company says the move is aimed at reducing the risk of debris from the spacecraft’s belly re-entering the atmosphere.
July 26 statementSpaceX has announced that it will change the splashdown site of its Dragon spacecraft to a spot off the coast of California as part of measures to control where the Dragon’s torso re-enters the orbit after separating from the capsule.
Since the introduction of the Crew Dragon spacecraft and its cargo variants, a fuselage section has been ejected before the deorbit burn and passively re-entered a few weeks or months later. SpaceX said it chose this option after working with NASA and using “industry standard models” that predict the fuselage would completely break apart on re-entry, leaving no debris behind.
But that wasn’t the case. On several occasions, fairly large pieces of debris that fell from Dragon’s trunk survived re-entry and fell in places like Australia, Saskatchewan, and North Carolina. While no damage or injuries were caused by falling debris, it did highlight the dangers involved.
“We’re excited to be working with NASA on this exciting new program,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said earlier this year. The agency had been working with SpaceX to study ways to better control debris generated by re-entry into the atmosphere.One option being considered was to jettison the trunk after Dragon performs its deorbit burn, which would allow the trunk to re-enter at roughly the same time along the capsule’s re-entry path, he said at the time.
SpaceX said that’s the approach it’s taking. “SpaceX will implement software modifications to ensure Dragon performs a de-orbit burn prior to jettisoning the trunk, similar to our first 21 Dragon recoveries,” the company said. The company ruled out alternatives such as a complete redesign of the trunk or adding a propulsion system for controlled re-entry.
That would require a splashdown off the coast of California, rather than near Florida. “The Mobile Trunk separation following the deorbit burn will place the trunk on a known re-entry trajectory for a safe splashdown off the coast of California, upstream from the Dragon spacecraft,” the company said.
The changes will begin sometime next year, Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s Dragon mission management director, said during a briefing on the Crew-9 Crew Dragon mission on July 26. SpaceX will move its recovery ship, currently in Florida, to California and will be based out of the Port of Long Beach.
She added that the Crew 9 mission, scheduled to launch as soon as Aug. 18, is scheduled to splash down off the coast of Florida in early 2025 as the transition gets underway. “We are hopeful that will be completed shortly after Crew 9’s return.”
While this change reduces the risk of debris, it creates new problems for the Dragon recovery effort. “NASA imposed new requirements starting with CRS-21 to further shorten the return timeline and enhance science capabilities,” she said, which were incorporated into the Dragon recovery plan in Florida.
“So that’s the new challenge that we’re facing now, and what we’re working on here this year is how to maintain all of what we’ve learned and all of the support for not only the cargo but also the crew as we get back to the West Coast,” she said of the rapid delivery of the science payload after splashdown. “We’re working out all of the details of that, but it will be better than what we designed for Dragon 1.”
But landing off the West Coast has other benefits. “One of the advantages of the West Coast is the weather is much better,” she said, after looking into the conditions and weather regulations for the Dragon landing. “We’ve actually found that the West Coast sites that we’re looking at have much better weather, so the availability for return visits is much higher.”
