At 2:32 a.m. EST, Crew Dragon undocked from the International Space Station to begin the final phase of its uncrewed Demo-1 flight test. The spacecraft is slowly maneuvering away from the orbital laboratory into an orbital track that will return it and its cargo safely to Earth.

NASA will continue to provide live coverage until Crew Dragon is out of the immediate area of the station and will resume at 7:30 a.m. for the reentry, splashdown, and recovery.

In about five hours, the Crew Dragon will separate from its trunk whose exterior contains a solar array that provided power to Dragon and a radiator to reject heat.

Following separation, Crew Dragon’s thrusters will initiate the spacecraft’s deorbit burn at about 7:52 a.m. The 15-minute, 25-second burn will place the Crew Dragon on its final re-entry path into Earth’s atmosphere. The spacecraft is expected to splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean at about 8:45 a.m., its speed slowed by an enhanced parachute system in which drogue parachutes will deploy about four minutes before landing to unfurl four main chutes less than a minute later.

After Crew Dragon lands in the Atlantic Ocean, SpaceX’s recovery ship will recover it and return it to Port Canaveral, Florida to conclude its mission.

SpaceX’s inaugural mission with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is an important end-to-end to test of the new system’s capabilities.

More details about the mission and NASA’s commercial crew program can be found in the press kit online and by following the commercial crew blog, @commercial_crew and commercial crew on Facebook.

Learn more about station activities by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

Crew Dragon docked with the ISS on March 3 at 6:02 a.m. EST, becoming the first American spacecraft to autonomously dock with the orbiting laboratory. You can watch a replay of the docking webcast below and find out more about the mission in our press kit.

SpaceX has to be pretty pleased with how Crew Dragon and the Falcon 9 rocket performed these past few days. Everything went pretty much perfectly, and now it’s clear that SpaceX is in the lead and ahead of competitor Boeing in the race to provide NASA with the means to send astronauts into space whenever it wants.

Boeing, which is working on the much-hyped Starliner crewed spacecraft, has yet to send it into space and perform any kind of preliminary uncrewed test flight to the space station.

Last week, upon completing its pre-launch reviews, NASA estimated that if the demonstration flight went well we could see crewed flights within a few months. That timeline looks to still be intact after a solid showing by the Crew Dragon.

Click to access crew_demo-1_press_kit.pdf

MISSION

It is time for a new era of space exploration where astronauts once again launch into space from American soil. Under the Commercial Crew Program, NASA and industry partners prepare for the next generation of American spacecraft that will launch astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) from here, the Space Coast of Florida.

The Commercial Crew SpaceX Demonstration Mission 1 will launch SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket from America’s multi-user spaceport, Kennedy Space Center. No astronauts will be on board for this demonstration mission, but this is the first launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, a spacecraft that will soon transport astronauts to the International Space Station.

Learn more about the first Commercial Crew Program flight assignments. 

LAUNCH VIEWING

Please read carefully as launch viewing opportunities for this historic launch are different than other rocket launches. These packages are available online only.

On Friday, August 3, 2018, NASA announced the first four astronauts who will launch aboard Crew Dragon (also known as Dragon 2) to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which will return human spaceflight capability to the United States for the first time since the Space Shuttle Program was retired in 2011.

Following SpaceX’s first demonstration mission without humans aboard Crew Dragon targeted for November 2018, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be the first two NASA astronauts to fly in the Dragon spacecraft. This mission, currently targeted for April 2019, will liftoff from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with the astronauts aboard Crew Dragon atop a Falcon 9 rocket.

After Crew Dragon’s demonstration mission with crew is complete, Victor Glover and Mike Hopkins will be the first two NASA astronauts to launch aboard Crew Dragon to the International Space Station for a long-duration mission. This mission will mark SpaceX’s first operational crew mission under our current Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract with NASA.

As Dragon prepares to carry humans for the first time, the spacecraft continues to make regular trips to the International Space Station carrying cargo under SpaceX’s Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. Currently, Dragon is the only spacecraft flying that is capable of returning significant amounts of cargo to Earth.

https://www.spacex.com/news/2018/08/04/nasa-astronauts-flying-aboard-crew-dragon

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“You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great – and that’s what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”

Elon Musk, SpaceX

STARSHIP AND SUPER HEAVY

SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy Rocket represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to service all Earth orbit needs as well as the Moon and Mars. This two-stage vehicle—composed of the Super Heavy rocket (booster) and Starship (ship)—will eventually replace Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Dragon. By creating a single system that can service a variety of markets, SpaceX can redirect resources from Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Dragon to Starship—which is fundamental in making the system affordable.

ROCKET Capability

Mars Entry

Starship will enter the Mars atmosphere at 7.5 kilometers per second and decelerate aerodynamically. The vehicle’s heat shield is designed to withstand multiple entries, but given that the vehicle is coming into the Mars atmosphere so hot, we still expect to see some ablation of the heat shield (similar to wear and tear on a brake pad). The engineering videos below simulate the physics of Mars entry for Starship.

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/

The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission is a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars. It was manufactured by Lockheed Martin, is managed by NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and most payload instruments it carries were built by European agencies. The mission launched on 5 May 2018 at 11:05 UTC aboard an Atlas V-401 rocket^[ and successfully landed^[13] at Elysium Planitia on Mars on 26 November 2018 at 19:52:59 UTC. InSight traveled 483 million km (300 million mi) during its journey.

InSight‘s objectives are to place a seismometer, called SEIS, on the surface of Mars to measure seismic activity and provide accurate 3D models of the planet’s interior; and measure internal heat flow using a heat probe called HP³ to study Mars’ early geological evolution.^[This could bring a new understanding of how the Solar System’s terrestrial planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars – and Earth’s Moon form and evolve.

The lander was originally planned for launch in March 2016. Following a persistent vacuum failure in the SEIS instrument prior to launch, with the 2016 launch window missed, InSight was returned to Lockheed Martin’s facility in Denver, Colorado, for storage. NASA officials decided in March 2016 to delay launching InSight to May 2018. This allowed time for the seismometer issue to be fixed, although it increased the cost from the previous US$675 million to a total of US$830 million.^[By reusing technology from the Mars Phoenix lander, which successfully landed on Mars in 2008, mission costs and risks were reduced.

In the not-too-distant future, astronauts destined to be the first people to walk on Mars will leave Earth aboard an Orion spacecraft. Carried aloft by the tremendous power of a Space Launch System rocket, our explorers will begin their Journey to Mars from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying the spirit of humanity with them to the Red Planet.

The first future human mission to Mars and those that follow will require the ingenuity and dedication of an entire generation. It’s a journey worth the risks. We take the next step on that journey this Thursday, Dec. 4, with the uncrewed, first flight test of Orion. (Follow along on the Orion Blog, or see the full schedule of events and launch viewing opportunities).

Orion is the first spacecraft built for astronauts destined for deep space since the storied Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s. It is designed to go farther than humans have ever traveled, well beyond the moon, pushing the boundaries of spaceflight to new heights.

Orion will open the space between Earth and Mars for exploration by astronauts. This proving ground will be invaluable for testing capabilities future human Mars missions will need. The area around our moon, in particular, called cis-lunar space, is a rich environment for testing human exploration needs, like advanced spacewalking suits, navigating using gravity, and protecting astronauts from radiation and extreme temperatures.

One of Orion’s early missions in the 2020s will send astronauts to explore an asteroid, which will be placed in a stable orbit around the moon using a robotic spacecraft. This Asteroid Redirect Mission will test new technologies, like Solar Electric Propulsion, which will help us send heavy cargo to Mars in advance of human missions. Astronauts aboard Orion will return to Earth with samples of the asteroid, having tested a number of collection tools and techniques we’ll use in future human missions to Mars or its moons.

Astronauts will board Orion for a first crewed flight in 2021. Many of Orion’s systems needed for that flight and others will be tested on Thursday with the first uncrewed flight test.

Orion’s flight test is designed to test many of the riskiest elements of leaving Earth and returning home in the spacecraft. It will evaluate several key separations events, including the jettison of the launch abort system that will be capable of carrying astronauts on future missions to safety if a problem were to arise on the launch pad or during ascent to space, and the separation of the Orion crew module from its service module ahead of its reentry though Earth’s atmosphere.

Orion’s heat shield also will be tested to examine how the spacecraft endures its high speed return from deep space. The heat shield will experience temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit during Thursday’s test, and will come back at about 80 percent of the speed the spacecraft would endure returning from the vicinity of the moon.

Other elements will also be put to the test, including how Orion’s computers handle the radiation environment in the Van Allen Belt, the spacecraft’s attitude control and guidance and how its 11 parachutes slow the crew module to just about 20 mph ahead of its splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

Teams also will evaluate the procedures and tools used to recover Orion from the ocean after it touches down about 600 miles southwest of San Diego and is transported back to shore. 

Testing these capabilities now will help ensure that Orion will be the next generation spacecraft for missions in the 2020s that will put Mars within the reach of astronauts in the 2030s. 

As development continues on Orion, astronauts aboard the International Space Station are helping us learn how to protect the human body for longer durations, which missions to Mars will require. Researchers operating increasingly advanced rovers and spacecraft on and around Mars are revealing the planet’s history while characterizing its environment to better prepare for human explorers. Here on Earth, the U.S. spaceflight industry is building and testing next generation technologies NASA will need to send astronauts to Mars and return them safely.

The Journey to Mars is humanity’s Next Giant Leap into our solar system. The Orion spacecraft and its first flight test will help make it possible.

All indications are that three and a half billion years ago, Mars looked like Earth. It had lakes. It had rivers. It had river deltas. It had snow-capped peaks and puffy clouds and blue sky. Three and a half billion years ago, it was a happening place. The same time on Earth, that’s when life started. So did life start on Mars?

John M. Grunsfeld
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/mars

NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s – goals outlined in the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and in the U.S. National Space Policy, also issued in 2010.

Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and robotic and human exploration as we expand our presence into the solar system. Its formation and evolution are comparable to Earth, helping us learn more about our own planet’s history and future. Mars had conditions suitable for life in its past. Future exploration could uncover evidence of life, answering one of the fundamental mysteries of the cosmos: Does life exist beyond Earth?

While robotic explorers have studied Mars for more than 40 years, NASA’s path for the human exploration of Mars begins in low-Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station. Astronauts on the orbiting laboratory are helping us prove many of the technologies and communications systems needed for human missions to deep space, including Mars. The space station also advances our understanding of how the body changes in space and how to protect astronaut health.

Our next step is deep space, where NASA will send a robotic mission to capture and redirect an asteroid to orbit the moon. Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will explore the asteroid in the 2020s, returning to Earth with samples. This experience in human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit will help NASA test new systems and capabilities, such as Solar Electric Propulsion, which we’ll need to send cargo as part of human missions to Mars. Beginning in FY 2018, NASA’s powerful Space Launch System rocket will enable these “proving ground” missions to test new capabilities. Human missions to Mars will rely on Orion and an evolved version of SLS that will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever flown.

A fleet of robotic spacecraft and rovers already are on and around Mars, dramatically increasing our knowledge about the Red Planet and paving the way for future human explorers. The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover measured radiation on the way to Mars and is sending back radiation data from the surface. This data will help us plan how to protect the astronauts who will explore Mars. Future missions like the Mars 2020 rover, seeking signs of past life, also will demonstrate new technologies that could help astronauts survive on Mars.

Engineers and scientists around the country are working hard to develop the technologies astronauts will use to one day live and work on Mars, and safely return home from the next giant leap for humanity. NASA also is a leader in a Global Exploration Roadmap, working with international partners and the U.S. commercial space industry on a coordinated expansion of human presence into the solar system, with human missions to the surface of Mars as the driving goal. Follow our progress at www.nasa.gov/exploration and www.nasa.gov/mars.