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martyb writes:

SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule Gets NASA Thumbs-Up for March Test Flight :

NASA and SpaceX got together on Friday and scrutinized the Crew Dragon Demo-1 mission to determine if it's truly ready to launch to the International Space Station in March. So far, so good.

The result of the flight readiness reviews is that NASA is confirming the targeted launch time of 11:48 p.m. Pacific on Friday, Mar. 1 (2:48 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, Mar. 2) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The capsule will ride to space on a Falcon 9 rocket.

Crew Dragon won't have any humans on board for this initial test flight, but it will carry supplies and equipment to the ISS.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Dragon aces final NASA review, now set for test flight on March 2

On Friday, key NASA officials gathered in a large meeting room at Kennedy Space Center. Here, for decades, NASA managers reviewed analyses about the next space shuttle mission and, more often than not, cleared the vehicle for launch. But after 2011, there were no more crew vehicles to review.

That changed this week when NASA convened a "flight readiness review" for SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft for its initial test flight, without people on board. By Friday evening, the meeting was over and, among the NASA and SpaceX officials, the verdict was in—Dragon was ready for its demonstration mission as part of the commercial crew program on March 2. Launch time for the Falcon 9 rocket is 2:48am ET (07:48 UTC), from Kennedy Space Center. "I'm ready to fly," NASA's commercial crew program manager, Kathy Lueders, said succinctly.

The mood was ebullient among NASA leadership as well as SpaceX's top official on the scene, Hans Koenigsmann, the company's vice president of build and flight reliability. He, too, had participated in the flight readiness review in the storied room where so many shuttle meetings had been held. "It was a really big deal for SpaceX, and me personally," he said.

[...] This will not be a pro forma test. Although Lueders and the other NASA officials are comfortable with the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft for this test flight, there are still some issues they want to close out before astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken launch into space on an identical rocket and capsule.

NASA is still gathering data about the rocket and spacecraft's composite overwrap pressure vessels, or COPVs, which are essentially bottles that store rocket fuels at extremely high pressures. Engineers also want to ensure that there is enough margin in the Dragon's parachutes for a safe landing under various conditions, and study some concerns about the propellant feed system in the Dragon spacecraft. Finally, a mannequin will fly inside the vehicle during the test flight to determine stresses on humans during the flight.

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