14 DAY TRIAL // Engineers at the Hawthorne, California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) have just delivered their second unmanned Dragon space capsule to the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), in Florida.
The spacecraft is scheduled to go out on another test flight for the NASA Commercial Crew Development (CCDev2) program. Originally, the flight was supposed to launch this December, both SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently said that the date may slip into early 2012.
Dragon will fly to Earth's orbit aboard a Falcon 9 medium-lift delivery system, which was also designed and built by SpaceX. The two will take off from the CCAFS Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40), Universe Today reports.
At this point, SpaceX hopes to gain permission to try and dock the Dragon to the International Space Station (ISS). NASA has not yet provided a clear answer to this request, whereas the Russian Federal Space Agency (RosCosmos) recently declared itself strongly against it.
If the company does get permission, then Dragon will be placed on an orbit that will take it near the ISS. At that point, the station's Canadarm-2 robotic arm will capture the capsule, and dock it to one of the space lab's available docking ports.
“When it comes to the launch day, NASA will determine that, we’re pushing to launch on Dec. 19, but the final 'go' date is set by NASA and the range. We are currently working to conduct a wet dress rehearsal on November 21st,” SpaceX vice president for communications Bobby Block explained.
“This is very exciting, our last launch was about a year ago, so to have a fully-operational Dragon up-and-ready to make a historic docking to the International Space Station it’s terrifically exciting.” the official added recently.
When this Dragon capsule launches, it will mark the second flight of the spacecraft, as well as the third flight for its delivery system. Falcon 9 had its maiden flight in June 2010, and its first flight together with Dragon in December 2010.
The second flight was a tremendous success. Dragon managed to reach orbit, spin around the planet several times, and then splashed safely in the ocean. This made SpaceX the fourth entity ever to conduct such a maneuver. The other three are the United States, China and Russia.