A few hours ago, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft docked with the Harmony module of the International Space Station completing the first part of its Crew-9 or SpaceX Crew-9 mission that began with its launch about 28 hours earlier. After checking that the pressure gets properly balanced, the hatch will be opened to allow Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov to enter the Station and start their mission, which will last about five months.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft is equipped with an automated docking system to the International Docking Adapter (IDA). The approach procedure, with safety as the top priority, has been extensively tested during previous missions of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The Crew-9 mission’s crew met the Crew-8 mission’s crew, who is scheduled to depart the Station on October 7. SpaceX offers space missions independent from Russia while the situation with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is currently in limbo. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who arrived at the Station on the Starliner Calypso, will return to Earth on the Crew Dragon Freedom due to problems with the Calypso’s thrusters during the Boeing Crew Flight Test mission.
On September 7, the Starliner Calypso spacecraft returned to Earth without a crew and even then there were some problems with one of the thrusters used to orient the capsule during reentry, which are different from the ones used in space. In short, the future of this collaboration between NASA and Boeing is unclear, and for the near future, NASA will have to continue to rely on SpaceX to transport astronauts.
NASA’s choice to have at least two transportation providers is due precisely to the possibility that one of them might have a problem. Redundancy offers reliability and flexibility. Even SpaceX is not immune to problems: the first leg of the Crew-9 mission was a success but the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket used to launch the Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft had an engine problem right at the end of the flight and re-entered in an area different than the planned one. As a result, SpaceX has decided to postpone the next launches to investigate right when there are two important missions for NASA and ESA scheduled for October.
