#crs5

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Sunday’s JASON-3 launch marked the third time SpaceX attempted droneship landings of the Falcon 9′s first stage booster. In the video above from /r/SpaceX user APTX 4869, these three landing attempts can be compared side-by-side. What is interesting to compare between the CRS-6 and JASON-3 landings is the smoothness the vehicle comes in to land in the most recent attempt. SpaceX said that sluggish engine gimbal response times for the CRS-6 attempt caused that stage to impact slightly harder than expected. When comparing the footage, that anomaly becomes visible. JASON-3 technically was a successful landing, but one of its four legs did not lock into place due to prelaunch ice buildup, and the rocket fell over.

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Dragon prepares to fly back to Earth.

After just shy of one month in space, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is preparing for its return to Earth tomorrow.

Today, space station crewmembers finished loading Dragon with 3,700 pounds of cargo scheduled for recovery. Hatches between the two vehicles were sealed ahead of tomorrow’s release from the station, which is scheduled for 2:09 pm EST.

The deorbit burn is scheduled for 7:00 PM EST, with splashdown occurring 44 minutes later at 7:44 PM EST.

Tuesday will be a busy day for the company, having two major operations occurring almost simultaneously. A Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket is scheduled to launch NASA’s DSCOVR mission at 6:05 PM EST. The vehicle’s first stage will perform a reentry burn in a second attempt to land the rocket on a seaborne landing barge.

Less than an hour after the Falcon’s landing attempt, Dragon will splash down off the coast of Baja California.

The CRS-5 mission launched on January 10th and arrived at the space station two days later. It is the company’s fifth scheduled resupply flight to the orbiting laboratory under the Commercial Resupply contract.

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SpaceX releases video of Falcon 9 landing attempt. Earlier this morning, I posted an article on Elon Musk’s tweets to John Carmack showing images of the Falcon 9 attempting to land on the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship following the CRS-5 launch last week. Those images appear to have been video stills from a camera on the barge, and taken from the above video. SpaceX posted this footage to their Vine account at 11:53 AM EST today.  You can see the booster approaching the barge at a 45 degree angle following the failure of the hypersonic grid fins. This failure was caused by not enough hydraulic fluid in the grid fin control system, which in turn powered the system down.  The engine section of the booster explodes upon impact with the ASDS’s surface, causing residual booster propellant to explode. The upper portion of the booster continues to fall, careening off the side of the ship and into the ocean.

This is incredible footage of an extremely difficult maneuver. SpaceX will again attempt to land the first stage of their Falcon 9 rocket following the January 31 launch of DSCOVR.

As Musk himself echoes in the Vine’s title: “Close, but no cigar. This time.”

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Elon Musk releases images of Falcon 9 landing attempt Late last night, Elon Musk, CEO, founder and chief designer of SpaceX, tweeted images showing the failed landing attempt of his Falcon 9 last week. Four tweets were sent between 1:42 and 1:54 AM EST to John Carmack, Chief Technology Officer of Oculus VR and founder of Armadillo Aerospace with the above images.

Musk tweeted out a short description along with each image which describes in better detail the events of the landing attempt:

The captions below correlate to the images above, top to bottom:

Before impact, fins lose power and go hardover. Engines fights to restore, but …

Rocket hits hard at ~45 deg angle, smashing legs and engine section

Residual fuel and oxygen combine

Full RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly) event. Ship is fine minor repairs. Exciting day!

This new information now paints a better picture of SpaceX’s landing attempt that could only be guessed at previously. It was theorized that the Falcon 9 first stage impacted the barge at a greater than normal velocity and toppled into the ocean. Images released last week showed the barge returning to its Jacksonville port with burn damage and metal fragments under tarps:

Musk also stated that the next landing attempt will occur on January 31, after a Falcon 9 launches NASA’s DSCOVR mission. 50% more hydraulic fluid will be added to the grid fins on this second attempt to ensure that they do not run out prematurely, as on this mission.

This particular Falcon 9 launched a Dragon capsule to the International Space Station on the fifth Commercial Resupply Mission for the company.

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Of the 2,395 pounds of cargo Dragon is bringing to the International Space Station on CRS-5, 495 of that will belong to the Cloud Aerosol Transport System experiment. The payload will be installed on the Exposed Facility of the Japanese Kibo laboratory. In the image above, from SpaceX, the CATS experiment can be seen attached to the unpressurized trunk of the Dragon spacecraft's service module. CATS will study the Earth’s atmosphere for aerosol dissipation and interaction on climate.

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Earlier this morning, Tuesday, 13 January, the crew of Expedition 42 opened the hatch to the Dragon spacecraft. Dragon arrived at the orbiting outpost early yesterday morning, and was berthed to the Harmony node about 30 minutes earlier than initially scheduled. Flight Engineers Samantha Cristoforetti, Terry Virts and Commander Barry Wilmore opened Dragon's hatch and, wearing masks, immediately began air sampling operations. This ensures there are no miniscule debris particles floating around the capsule that would be impossible to detect on the ground. 1,901 pounds of cargo are stored within the Dragon capsule itself, with the remaining 494 pounds belonging to the Cloud Aerosol Transport System experiment that is in Dragon's unpressurized cargo trunk. CATS will study the Earth;'s atmosphere for aerosol dissipation and interaction on climate.

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Early this morning (12 January, 2015), the Dragon spacecraft was grappled and berthed to the International Space Station.

The space stations Canadarm 2 Remote Manipulator System latched on to Dragon's grapple fixture at 5:54 AM EST. Once captured, the spacecraft was maneuvered to the nadir, or Earth-facing side of the Harmony module.

In the first image above, tweeted out by Samantha Cristoforetti, we see the interior of Harmony's open berthing port with Dragon. The exterior of Dragon's forward berthing hatch is covered in a reflective gold foil, which helps regulate temperature. The hatches between the two vehicles will not open until Tuesday, but given the ease at which Dragon was berthed might push the event to late Monday. Dragon launched at 4:47 AM EST Friday, December 10, after a month of delays. Originally scheduled for a December 16 launch, SpaceX slipped the flight to December 19 in order to better prepare themselves. A Flight Readiness Firing three days prior revealed issues with the Falcon 9 booster which further pushed the launch date to January 6. One minute and twenty-one seconds before a planned 6:18 AM EST liftoff, actuator drift in the second stage's thrust vectoring system aborted the countdown. 

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SpaceX’s Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS) returned to its port in Jacksonville, Florida earlier today (11 January 2015).

As seen in the image above, a portion of one of the barge’s corners have been significantly charred by the Falcon 9’s landing attempt. Additionally, portable hardware containers nearby were damaged, though as Elon Musk himself tweeted, the damage is not significant.

It is unclear what is under the tarps on the barge’s deck, though it could possibly be pieces of the Falcon 9 rocket.

The location of the damage near the corner and edge of the barge corroborates the details given by Musk on the landing attempt's failure. He stated that hydraulic fluid controlling the first stages control find ran out shortly before reaching the barge. The location of the damage lines up with the statement of a "hard" landing, as well as the loss of the rocket stage from toppling over in the ocean after impact.

SpaceX is scheduled to launch the DSCOVR mission for NASA later this month, which may also see another attempt at first stage recovery.