SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
SpaceX set to Launch Critical Dragon Demonstration Mission Tonight:
It's finally go time. For the first time since 2011 and the space shuttle's retirement, a rocket and spacecraft stand on a launch pad in Florida capable of blasting humans into space. Launch time is set for 2:49am ET (07:49 UTC) Saturday from Kennedy Space Center. NASA and SpaceX have worked toward this goal for nine years. It hasn't always been easy, but now here we are.
This particular Dragon won't carry humans, just a single mannequin named Ripley as an homage to Sigourney Weaver's iconic character in the movie Alien. Ripley will wear a flight suit and be well instrumented in order to determine conditions inside the spacecraft. "The idea is to get an idea of how humans would feel in her place basically," Hans Koenigsmann, the vice president of build and flight reliability at SpaceX, said at a news briefing Thursday.
[...] This uncrewed flight must go off smoothly before NASA and SpaceX can proceed to crewed missions and end the space agency's dependence on Russian transportation to the station. So much must go right from start to finish. It will begin about an hour before Saturday morning's launch, when NASA will be closely watching the load-and-go fueling operations of the Falcon 9 rocket, which will occur with astronauts on board during crewed flights.
NASA engineers also want to see how Dragon performs in orbit, how smoothly it docks with the space station, and the condition of the vehicle's interior once the hatch opens. (Hopefully there will be no free freon.) Then, perhaps the most critical phase of the mission will come during the return to Earth, when Dragon re-enters Earth's atmosphere and lands in the Atlantic Ocean, under parachutes. This is presently expected to occur on Friday, March 8, at around 8:45am ET.
There are some great pics in the story, well worth loading and reading all the way through.
This is a new booster (per NASA's specification) which is scheduled for a landing attempt on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You.
The launch is being live-streamed on YouTube. Video usually starts 15-20 minutes before launch.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday March 02 2019, @12:28AM
This time, sending her up alone, locked in a seat with nothing but telemetry to keep her company? I can't imagine she'd be too happy with that [youtube.com].