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Subscribe to RSSThe Dragon space capsule returned to Earth from the International Space Station, capping off its historic mission with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. NBC's Mark Barger reports.
SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule parachuted to a picture-perfect splashdown in the Pacific Ocean today, ending the first-ever commercial mission to the International Space Station.
The gumdrop-shaped Dragon made history last week as the first U.S. craft to reach the orbital station since last year's retirement of the space shuttle fleet, and it made history today as the first commercial craft to return a shipment from orbit.
SpaceX's 40-year-old billionaire founder, Elon Musk, told reporters that the nine-day space station resupply mission was "like a grand slam" in baseball, and repeatedly voiced joy and surprise at how well it went. "There are a thousand ways that it could fail, so this may sound sort of odd, but when you see it actually work, you're sort of surprised," he said.
The 14.4-foot-high (4.4-meter-high) capsule came down about 560 miles west of Baja California, within a mile of its target point, Musk said. When he saw the first pictures of the craft bobbing in the Pacific, he said his reaction was, "Welcome home, baby. ... It's like seeing your kid come home."
Michael Altenhofen / SpaceX via AP
A photo from SpaceX shows the Dragon spacecraft floating on the surface of the Pacific Ocean about 500 miles west of Mexico's Baja California today.
The demonstration flight will almost certainly earn a go-ahead for SpaceX to start space station resupply missions in earnest under the terms of a $1.6 billion contract with NASA. Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of NASA's commercial crew and cargo program, said a few more items needed to be marked off on the list of criteria, but he voiced nearly as much satisfaction about the results as Musk did.
"It is very easy to see that this satisfies, I believe, 100 percent of those criteria," he said.
The demonstration flight began on May 22 with the Dragon's launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The mission reached its climax last Friday when astronauts used the space station's robotic arm to pull the Dragon in to its docking port on the the station's Harmony module. On the following day, when station crew members entered the Dragon for the first time, NASA astronaut Don Pettit gushed over its new-car smell.
Over the days that followed, the station's crew unloaded a half-ton of food, equipment, experiments and other supplies — then loaded it back up with more than 1,300 pounds (620 kilograms) of non-essential Earth-bound shipments.
What happened today
Today, astronauts reversed the process they went through last week. The robotic arm pulled the Dragon out from its port and positioned it for release at 5:49 a.m. ET. SpaceX's craft then executed a series of engine burns to take itself out of the station's neighborhood and descend from orbit.
The final engine burn slowed the Dragon's orbital velocity by 100 meters per second (224 mph) — enough to drop it into a fiery descent through the atmosphere. The craft's bottom is coated with a layer of protective material called PICA-X, which SpaceX's engineers say is resilient enough to weather a return to Earth from Mars. At its peak, the heat shield had to endure temperatures in excess of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius).
The suspense built during a few minutes of scheduled communication blackout, but eased when infrared imagery from airplanes circling the projected splashdown site showed the Dragon's parachutes opening. For some observers, the sight of the red-and-white main parachutes sprouting from the capsule sparked a flashback to the days of the Apollo moonshots.
Michael Altenhofen / SpaceX
A photo taken from a recovery ship shows the SpaceX Dragon's parachutes floating in the air after the cargo craft's splashdown.
At 11:42 a.m. ET, SpaceX's controllers confirmed that the craft made a successful splashdown. NASA mission commentator Josh Byerly observed that the Dragon mission "ended like it began — which is, fairly easily."
A pre-positioned flotilla of recovery ships loaded up the Dragon and will bring it back to Los Angeles, near SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. Some high-value experimental payloads will be express-delivered to NASA within 48 hours; however, the bulk of Dragon's cargo will be taken off after it's transported to SpaceX's rocket test facility in MacGregor, Texas. This particular Dragon won't be reused for another NASA flight, but eventually SpaceX plans to refurbish the capsules as well as rocket stages.
Over the past few years, NASA has paid out about $300 million to help SpaceX develop the Dragon and the Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX has invested a similar amount of its own capital. This test mission should clear the way for SpaceX to start in on the $1.6 billion station resupply contract, which covers 12 flights through 2015. Musk said he expected the first full-fledged Dragon cargo run to lift off late this summer.
Another company, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp., is working on an alternate commercial delivery system, but that system hasn't yet gone through flight testing.
Grand plans for NASA and SpaceX
Such deliveries are part of NASA's grand plan in the post-shuttle era to transfer space station resupply operations to commercial companies, at what is expected to be a cost far less expensive than space shuttle operations. Theoretically, that would free up money for NASA to concentrate on developing a more powerful heavy-lift rocket and a more capable Orion spacecraft for missions beyond Earth orbit — heading toward asteroids, the moon and eventually Mars.
SpaceX and three other companies — Blue Origin, the Boeing Co. and Sierra Nevada Corp. — are working on spacecraft capable of transporting astronauts to and from the station, and NASA expects those ships to be available for its use by 2017. SpaceX's crew-carrying craft will be an upgraded version of the Dragon that was used for the current cargo mission.
Musk said Dragon 2.0 would have a thruster system capable of making near-pinpoint, helicopter-style landings. That system is due for testing later this year, and could be ready for NASA in three to five years. Such a system would be a must-have for landings on other worlds, Musk noted.
Musk, a dot-com billionaire who made his fortune with PayPal, founded SpaceX in 2002 as part of his own grand plan to help humans get to Mars and become a "multiplanet species."
Today he noted that the company, known more formally as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is under contract for about 40 launches, including the 12 planned Dragon cargo missions for NASA as well as additional commercial launches. Just this week, SpaceX announced a deal with Intelsat to put a telecom satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit using the Falcon Heavy rocket, which is still under development. SpaceX also hopes to win some launch contracts for the Falcon Heavy from the U.S. military.
Some veteran observers of the space effort, including Apollo moonwalkers Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, have been critical of NASA's move toward commercialization. Cernan, for example, complained to Congress that commercial space companies "don't know what they don't know." But Musk said the Dragon mission demonstrated that "commercial spaceflight can be successful." He voiced hope that SpaceX's efforts would inspire a new generation of engineers and explorers.
"We're really at the dawn of a new age of space exploration, where there's going to be a huge amount of opportunity and a lot of exciting things happening," Musk said.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden expressed similar sentiment in a post-splashdown statement: "This successful splashdown and the many other achievements of this mission herald a new era in U.S. commercial spaceflight. American innovation and inspiration have once again shown their great strength in the design and operation of a new generation of vehicles to carry cargo to our laboratory in space. Now more than ever we're counting on the inventiveness of American companies and American workers to make the International Space Station and other low-Earth-orbit destinations accessible to any and all who have dreams of space travel."
More about the mission:
- Scenes from a SpaceX spectacular
- Space milestone sparks high praise
- Next steps in a new space race
- Cosmic Log archive on SpaceX
This item was last updated at 4 p.m. ET.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Congratulations to SpaceX for a successful 1st mission. However, after watching space shuttle landings for 30 years, watching DragonX splash down in the ocean with a parachute assist seems so old fashioned!
Sometimes the old tech works best. Lasers have a long way to go before they can seriously compete with simple ballistic guns.
I miss the (expensive) Shuttle. To me this seems like a giant leap into the past for mankind, but hoora for private enterprise. PS - A mission to Mars is an impossible pipe dream, it ain't gonna happen.
Maybe not in our lifetime we will get people to Mars. In the future, however, if we can survive ourselves, then absolutely we will get to Mars and beyond.
Not with fossil fuel you won't. Too heavy and slow. Dare I bring up alternative fuels? lololololol
It's not the fuel, its the mindset. We are part of this world and to travel to the planets we need to haul our environment along with us, air, water, food, shelter, not to mention gravity and radiation protection. A mission to Mars should include the transport of a space station, but I don't know if this is possible. Without orbiting habitat, a Mars mission would essentially be a death sentence for the astronauts.
It's really just about the money. Had we invested the amount we paid to just to keep AIG afloat, we could have probably funded a manned mission to Mars.
Also, the radiation shielding is a fascinating challenge. My understanding is that the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the ISS is also being tested to see if it creates an electromagnetic field strong enough that it deflects the nastier forms of cosmic radiation (gamma et al).
I imagine that if we had the guts to put a nuclear reactor in orbit (something similar in output to that of a nuclear submarine's), we'd have more than enough energy to support the kind of energy needs like a radiation shield and maybe even power a VASIMR engine. We would need to go nuclear because the further we get away from the sun, the exponentially less effective solar arrays are at collecting energy.
Thanks Space-X!!! Disregard comments from the flat earthers, they'll never understand! The parachute color choice was classy.
Eat your hearts out North Korea.
All the clowns here crying about "social programs" should be ashamed. The money this flight cost would be a couple of bucks apiece for one meal for the victims of oppressive governments that deny their people the opportinity to own a business and pull themselves out of the mire.
Kudos to Team Obama. The President has shown that Private Industry can do a far better job, far cheaper than a bunch of bungling Bureaunats. Get Government out and let the private sector do the job. Bring America back. Invest in Bain Capital.
Erm, I find it odd to find that sentiment associated with the Obama administration, but okay, sure.
Or was there some satire in there? It's hard to tell.
No satire. It was Obama's initiative to privatize LEO. Just because you have some deluded notion that the President can't possibly support private business doesn't make it real, pal.
I have no such notion. I never suggested that Katlan was mistaken or that I disagreed, and you'd do well to stop being so defensive (there's enough hate for our president that you hardly have to go looking for it where there is none). I'm just genuinely surprised to hear someone praising Obama as a champion of free industry and limited government. That's something I never hear even from his supporters or left-wing critics.
Good, then don't ask for a dime from us tax payers for space stations or anything at all. Do IT ALL private enterprise.
Katlan Jones
If you insist on making all things political, then at least do your homework. SpaceX began working on this project in 2005, in 2008 NASA gave them the go ahead and awarded the contract to them. Obama took office in 2009, 2 months after the contract had been awarded. People get confused by time all the time, just because it happens when someone is president, or not president means nothing, as somethings take many years to do.
Boeing is working on the manned capsule today, that will not see flight until after at least 1 if not 2 more presidential elections, but the work, and the contract is happening today.
Goes SpaceX! Hope it goes the same way the GPS did.
I will not speak out against shuttle program, the SpaceX will never materialize its mission without the technology, lesson,expertise developed for the space program.
This is a natural transition to commercial application from a military/technological development...Think internet, GPS....
JOB WELL DONE.
THANK YOU
I keep hearing people say that Nasa has let many thousands of people go due to the shuttle fleet being retired. IMO, the fact that they needed many thousands of people to launch a shuttle is the main problem with NASA. NASA is more of a jobs program and pork collector for certain congressional districts than an actual space program. The amount of funding the agency has wasted over the decades is astronomical.
Space isn't nearly as expensive of an endeavor as it has been made out to be over the past several decades. SpaceX and the other New Space companies are about to show the world exactly how low cost it can really be. Thanks to Mr Musk and others, Mankind is on the cusp of realizing our destiny of becoming a spacefaring species. Thank you, good sirs!
Very cool to see the phase-in of quasi-commercial space flight working hand in hand with government. An impressive milestone. And while some are poo-pooing the recurring cost of this private launch, it's gotta be a step forward from NASA in terms of development cost + time + recurring costs.
NASA only uses 1/2 of 1% of the budget annually anyway. All the budget-cut obsessed ditto-heads need to get their heads out of the sand about NASA and start whining about real waste (such as the 10 billion a week war in Iraq that lasted about a decade).
Dangerous mind....BRAVO!
Best post here.
Hey people, listen to this guy here. Just check out the last fiscal budget pie chart in 2010, when the shuttles were still flying. THEN check out the BIGGEST pig of the pie of them all....entitlements. NOW you see what is really budget BUSTER.
They have finally done what Howard Hughes would have done 40 years ago if the US Gov, had not insisted on doing it less effectivly at a much larger cost.
You mean old "spruce goose?" Surely you jest. Hughes was insane and everyone knows it. He built a wood plane that flew once, only.
Maybe he had in mind to build wooden space ships powered by rubber bands?
very proud!!! made in America, baby!!! made IN america! or IS it??? bet there's hundreds of parts made in (you KNOW where!!!)??? still, all in all, proud to see 'we' can do things like this w/o the 5+yr wait that we'd have for the 'official' government ride!
Gee, this event was SO big that I had to DIG to find the story for it here on line.
I don't see where they left any space junk up there. It is returning, and with stuff coming back. Maybe they can use it to haul garbage & junk back to earth.
Private industry. Build your own space stations and rockets and get zero federal dollars.
NASA should be disbanded and let private industry do it all.
So you went to the International Money Pit....Oh I'm sorry that's The International Space Station, and you docked with the mother ship. Then you unloaded some supplies and returned with some other experiments. This couldn't have been achieved using the existing Russian rockets that make regular trips already right? I don't get the whole excitement part. We supposedly have landed on the Moon already using 1960's technology but we can't seem to get back there with today's technology isn't that correct? Yeah that's what I thought. Call me when we do something worth the Millions that were just blown doing something that's already been done......I don't get all this hoopla over something that's been done before by inferior Nation's.....This mission wasn't all that impressive. YAWN
I understand your indifference, but I don't understand why you felt the need to so extensively advertise how little you care. Do you really have nothing better to do?
wayback, if it's not impressive then YOU build a rocket and capsule and fly it to the ISS. You seem to think any moron can do it, including "inferior Nation's", so YOU build a rocket.
And please remember the money spent on this flight went to employing many Americans, so they can pay taxes and buy things. Would you rather they NOT be employed, so they can not pay taxes and live on the streets?
Please, it's all a hoax! In case you haven't noticed, the moon isn't real, it's a projected image, like the bat-signal (which doesn't even work in bad weather anyway, so don't bother using it - just find a phone booth and hope Superman is in there changing clothes)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I didn't even know it was possible to pack so much fail into such a small space.
Bravo to you sir/madame!
All aboard the failboat!
Way to go, SpaceX! I couldn't be more pleased. Can't wait to see what comes next!
Congrats to SpaceX and the whole Dragon team!
I don't see where they left any space junk up there. It is returning, and with stuff coming back. Maybe they can use it to haul garbage & junk back to earth.
The space shuttle did zero to outer space in 8 minutes, burning kerosene the Falcon was almost that fast, maybe 9 or 10 based on launch dialog. You did not hear a throttle up call. We need rocket engines that use both hydrogen and things like kerosene, there are distinct advantages to both. We have not even started to grasp what this new capability means, with engineers that actually know basics we just may get to finally build power plants that efficiently and correctly extract power from air and water, and those liquids EIA puts in their charts will be everything from coal and natural gas derivatives to products from refurbished oil and gas wells. We have much to do while CERN and friends figure out why we have been sending them trillions of dollars so that they can eventually come up with something we need and can use.
One small step for capitalism...One giant step for mankind. To think, they did it without government payola and taxpayer dollars...Who would'a thought?? No doubt, they did it better and fiscally more responsibly then if government bureaucrats had their paws in the mix.
That's not really accurate. They used technology funded by taxpayer dollars, and the actual mission was a government-funded venture. So it's not like some company just decided to up and build a rocket to build a space factory or anything.
Yeah. I can't imagine that SpaceX isn't relying in at least some small part on the designs/data/lessons from the NASA and Air Force rocket tests starting shortly after WWII ended.
...Shoulders of giants and all
It has torqued my jaws that we were depending on the russians to get to the station. We should support these efforts so America can resume our place in the forefront of space travel.
colonising mars is a wonderful idea, how ever lets fix some problems down here in our home earth first, Like Pollution, Global warming, before we shift those problems over to another world
Why? If we were to pollute Mars or change its atmosphere, there'd be nothing on the planet to care. Let's strip the red planet dry.
Not to mention that the kinds of technology that we would need to develop to make such a trip possible would actually help to reduce our pollution back here on Earth.
I do so love how so many people seem to think that there's no ancillary benefits that are derived from such research.
@ sroachart
Hey buddy. Do you like solar panels, high-output/light batteries and fuel cell technology? Do you think that it might have some place in providing us with sufficient alternative energy in the (near) future?
Where do you think the funding for these innovations came from?
Here's a hint...it wasn't the private sector
Congratulations.
NOW my stupid question for the days is this.
WHY design a reusable cargo craft that will not be reused?
It's my understanding that NASA will only sent up "NEW DRAGONS".
Why not let the thing burn up?
Unless in the future it is carrying astronauts why have a recovery system?
Unless the return trip brings back experiments etc. it is basically a grabage carrier on the way home.
Or perhaps this one was just an overall test?
The only way to drive the price down is to remove government funding and make them rely solely on profits.
But right now the only way to make money in space is to help the governments with their space programs (like the ISS) or fulfill the childlike whimsy of disgustingly rich people. There isn't a whole lot to do up there. People might bring up metal mining, but we've got a long way to go before we're so desperate for minerals that sending out space ships is remotely cost-effective. So space exploration without government at all probably won't happen.
I tend to think that it won't be desperation for minerals per se, but that space-mining has the opportunity of bringing back vast quantities of minerals that are completely non-existent or exceedingly rare back on Earth. Bringing back iron ore isn't going to make any money, and I don't think that's the point.
Agreed, at least for the next couple of decades. But as taxpayers trail-blaze the way towards new frontiers, the private sector can subsequently pave the path and give us a better means of getting there.
SF accountant. I'm saying that the government has already done enough for this fledgling industry and should remove funding. These companies will obviously still have governments as customers.