Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon, now licensed to fly NASA astronauts for long-duration missions on board the Worldwide House Station. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann for Ars ]
SpaceX and NASA made historical past in Might by launching two astronauts—Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken—into orbit on board the privately developed Crew Dragon spacecraft.
After that extremely profitable two-month mission, SpaceX and NASA set about reviewing information to make sure the precise flight was in step with all of their simulations over the course of practically a decade. In creating Crew Dragon, among the many raft of checks carried out, SpaceX stated it accomplished about eight million hours of hardware-in-the-loop software program testing, 700 checks of Dragon’s SuperDraco thrusters, and practically 100 checks and flights of Dragon’s parachutes.
Following all of this work and two check flights, NASA formally accomplished certification of the Crew Dragon automobile and its Falcon 9 rocket for human spaceflight earlier this month. After a decade of wandering within the wilderness, with no impartial entry to area following the area shuttle’s retirement, NASA is about to be again within the enterprise of flying astronauts, because of this public-private partnership.
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