For the US space agency NASA, a success of the mission would mean more independence from Russian Soyuz rockets. US President Donald Trump wants to personally follow the launch of the Falcon 9 missile with a manned Dragon capsule at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. The start will also be streamed live on the Internet.
On Wednesday at 4:33 p.m. local time (10:33 p.m. CEST), 49-year-old Robert Behnken and 53-year-old Douglas Hurley, both US space veterans, are due to start at the ISS and dock there 19 hours later.
Weather as a factor of uncertainty
The chances that the weather will be bad during the announced start window are 60 percent. A next time window was calculated for Saturday.
Starting signal under Obama
The program for manned NASA missions with commercial company space shuttles began under Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama. Trump sees the now hoped-for success as confirmation of his plan to regain US supremacy in space. So he ordered that astronauts should fly to the moon again by 2024 at the latest. While this target seems unrealistic, it has given US space travel a boost.
U.S. spacecraft and Russian missiles had flown to the common space station for two decades since the ISS was built. However, the space shuttles were huge, extremely complicated in construction, and correspondingly expensive. The USA spent around $ 200 billion on a total of 135 flights.
Above all, however, there were two fatal accidents – with the “Challenger”, which exploded on January 28, 1986 shortly after the live broadcast worldwide, the entire crew – two women and five men – were killed. And on February 1, 2003, the “Columbia” space shuttle broke apart on its return about 61 kilometers above the surface at 19,900 km / h. The seven-man crew died. The cause was a hole in the heat shield. This was caused by a foam part torn off at the start.
Last shuttle flight in 2011
With the return of the “Atlantis” to Earth on July 21, 2011, the space shuttle program was therefore discontinued. Since then, the US astronauts have also been flying to the ISS with Russian Soyuz capsules. This arrangement outlasted the political tensions between Washington and Moscow, but was only intended as a temporary solution from the outset. NASA commissioned two private companies – SpaceX and the US aviation giant Boeing – to build spacecraft.
In the meantime, there were actually two space flights: The test flights of the likewise private company Virgin Galactic 2018 and 2019 are considered space flights according to NASA’s definition – from a height of 80 kilometers.
Note
NASA broadcasts the preparations for and the launch itself live on the Internet.
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SpaceX clearly ahead of Boeing
NASA has paid SpaceX $ 3 billion for this since 2011 – and nine years later, Tesla and PayPal founder Musk’s company is ready. It took five years longer than planned, but is clearly ahead of Boeing. A first test flight by Boeing’s Starliner failed due to serious software problems and must therefore be repeated.
SpaceX wrote “a real success story,” says Scott Hubbard, who previously ran a NASA research center and now teaches at Stanford Elite University. At the beginning, the young company was met with “enormous skepticism”. Top dog managers like Boeing and Lockheed would have told him that SpaceX people didn’t know what they were doing, said Hubbard, who sits on a SpaceX board.
NASA wants private space stations
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has been taking over unmanned supply flights to the ISS since 2012. The upcoming manned mission, called Demo-2, is important to the United States not only to reduce dependence on Russia, but also to capture the low-earth orbit business and tourist travel market.
One day, the United States should have a dozen commercial space stations in low earth orbit, says NASA chief Jim Bridenstine. SpaceX boss Musk reaches for the stars even higher: his company is currently working on a giant rocket called Starship, which is to circumnavigate the moon or even reach Mars. In Musk’s dreams, humans will develop into a “multi-planet species” in this way.
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