Approaching its second month between launches, SpaceX Falcon 9 boosters and their associated payloads continue to arrive in Florida in preparation for what will likely be a burst of several orbital launches in the final months of 2019. On Tuesday, October 1st, local resident Marcos Hicks (@SpaceCoast_Life) and several other locals captured the latest arrival […]
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Roughly 24 hours before SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was scheduled to present an update on the company’s Starship launch vehicle development, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted a bizarre and wholly unprovoked statement on the subject. Seemingly equating SpaceX’s recent Crew Dragon delays with the distribution of Elon Musk’s public attention, the NASA administrator’s comment was […]
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Speaking in an interview with CNN shortly after presenting an update on Starship, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the company’s next two completed Crew Dragon spacecraft are both set to arrive in Florida before the end of the year. Specifically, Musk estimated that Crew Dragon capsule 03 (C203) and its expendable trunk would be […]
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SpaceX has applied for an FCC Special Temporary Authority license to authorize rocket communications during what is likely Crew Dragon’s In-Flight Abort (IFA) test, now scheduled to occur no earlier than November 23rd. In line with recent comments from SpaceX executives, a November or December In-Flight Abort test would almost certainly preclude Crew Dragon from […]
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Over the course of Crew Dragon’s ‘Demo-1’ orbital launch debut, SpaceX and NASA coordinated in a multitude of ways to ensure mission success, including cooperative webcasts that covered nearly all of the spacecraft’s major milestones. On September 14th, SpaceX and NASA received the 2019 Emmy Award for Outstanding Interactive Program, honoring their combined video, social […]
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SpaceX has published a highlight reel touting “over 700 tests” of Crew Dragon’s SuperDraco abort thrusters at the same time as the company is about to close a failure investigation into a Dragon capsule’s April explosion, pinned primarily on abort-related hardware. According to a September 6th meeting of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), SpaceX […]
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SpaceX announced that it has successfully completed a routine static fire acceptance test of the Falcon 9 booster that will eventually support Crew Dragon’s inaugural astronaut launch, expected no earlier than early 2020. The booster in question – believed to be Falcon 9 B1058 – is very likely the first new Falcon 9 booster SpaceX […]
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Launched on July 25th, SpaceX’s CRS-18 Cargo Dragon successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) a few days later, delivering a major piece of space station hardware in its unpressurized trunk. Known as International Docking Adapter 3 (IDA-3), the docking port will quite literally open the door for future commercial missions to the space […]
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Speaking at the 2019 AIAA Propulsion & Energy Forum, SpaceX Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability Hans Koenigsmann was significantly more confident that the company is just days or weeks away from wrapping up a serious Crew Dragon failure investigation. On April 20th, flight-proven Crew Dragon capsule C201 experienced a catastrophic failure mode – […]
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SpaceX and NASA teams continue to prepare for Crew Dragon’s inaugural crewed launch (Demo-2) to the International Space Station (ISS) slated to possibly – but not likely – occur by year’s end. On Tuesday, an official NASA Twitter account published images of teams from SpaceX and the space agency performing a full rehearsal of crew […]
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