Upgrades at SpaceX’s most-used launch pad in Florida bought a trial run Thursday with the liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon cargo ship heading for the International Space Station.
SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon spacecraft launched at 4:55 pm EDT (20:55 UTC) Thursday from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This mission, referred to as CRS-30, is SpaceX’s thirtieth resupply mission to the area station since 2012.
The automated Dragon provide ship took off on prime of a Falcon 9 rocket, heading for a monthlong keep at the International Space Station, the place it should ship greater than 6,000 kilos of {hardware}, contemporary meals, and experiments for the lab’s seven-person crew.
In the previous couple of months, SpaceX has outfitted the launch pad with the gear essential to help launches of human spaceflight missions on the Crew Dragon spacecraft. The Cargo Dragon capsule is the similar measurement and form as SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, nevertheless it’s crammed with cargo racks and storage platforms quite than seats and cockpit shows.
This week, SpaceX technicians used the newly put in launch tower and crew entry arm at SLC-40 to load time-sensitive experiments and provides into the Cargo Dragon capsule atop the Falcon 9 rocket.
“CRS-30 will probably be our first Dragon to launch from Pad 40 since we put that brand-new crew tower in place,” mentioned Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission administration, in a prelaunch press convention.
Building new functionality
Starting final yr, development crews at Cape Canaveral erected segments of a greater than 200-foot-tall steel lattice tower at SLC-40, proper subsequent to the beginning blocks for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Before then, SLC-40 was primarily based on a “clear pad” structure, with none buildings to service or entry Falcon 9 rockets whereas they have been vertical on the pad.
In November, contractors raised the crew entry arm to an connect level close to the prime of the tower. This walkway will permit astronauts to crawl into the Crew Dragon spacecraft throughout a launch countdown. It additionally supplies entry to the hatch on the Cargo Dragon spacecraft for ultimate cargo loading.
Earlier this yr, SpaceX examined an escape chute at SLC-40 that might be utilized in an emergency to assist astronauts and floor crews shortly get away from the pad. The chute is analogous in operate to slide-wire baskets in use for many years at LC-39A, however as an alternative of driving a basket from the prime of the tower, personnel escaping a pad emergency would slide down a chute to hold them a number of hundred ft from the rocket.
SpaceX staff examined the pad escape chute final month at SLC-40. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief working officer, took the trip down the chute. “Astronaut and personnel security is SpaceX’s highest precedence, which is why I needed to personally check the new slide,” she posted on X, alongside a wink emoji.
Teams check the new emergency chutes from the pad 40 crew tower in Florida pic.twitter.com/rWVj7zaHp0
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 19, 2024
“The workforce took commercially accessible off the shelf expertise and utilized it to the crew tower,” Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice chairman of launch, wrote on X. “You are educated on it the similar method you might be educated on utilizing an emergency exit door on airplane. Only takes a few fast bodily actions to deploy the slide and anybody can successfully do it.”
As extra folks journey to area, significantly on bigger automobiles like SpaceX’s Starship, simplifying security programs will probably be vital.
“This system will assist us scale to larger towers and spaceships (assume 100 folks on Starship),” Dontchev wrote.
SpaceX and its contractors accomplished all of this work as Falcon 9s fired off SLC-40 each few days with Starlink satellites and different missions.
For the final 4 years, all of SpaceX’s crew and cargo launches to the area station have departed from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a number of miles up the coast from SLC-40. In 2018 and 2019, SpaceX outfitted LC-39A for Cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon missions forward of the firm’s first human spaceflight mission in 2020.
Walker mentioned the new infrastructure added at SLC-40 is “practically functionally an identical” to the gear for crew missions at LC-39A. The major variations are the technique of pad escape—the chute as an alternative of slide-wire baskets—and a extra sturdy elevator in the tower at SLC-40.
Previously, SpaceX used each SLC-40 and LC-39A for launches of its now-retired first-generation Dragon cargo capsules, which had their ultimate provides loaded earlier than SpaceX raised the rocket vertical for launch. Like common satellite tv for pc launches on Falcon 9s, each pads may help the first-generation Dragon cargo missions.
“Thanks to this new state-of-the-art crew tower required for our human spaceflight missions, that late-load cargo operation got a massive upgrade, too,” Walker said. “It is much easier to load a huge complement of time-critical NASA science into our Dragon spacecraft in the flight orientation.”
SpaceX has drastically ramped up its launch cadence since constructing LC-39A for Dragon missions. The firm plans practically 150 Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy launches this yr. When you are flying rockets each two or three days, it is inevitable two missions will find yourself vying for the similar launch slots. Most lately, that occurred in February, when a NASA crew mission was able to launch from LC-39A round the similar time as a slender launch window for Intuitive Machines’ first industrial lunar lander. Both needed to go off of LC-39A.
“Historically, Pad 40 has kind of become our high rate pad,” Walker said. “We’ve gotten the time between launches down to just a couple of days.”
LC-39A has seen much less use, primarily for Dragon crew and cargo flights, Falcon Heavy missions, and different “uniquely complicated” missions like the Intuitive Machines lander, Walker mentioned.