WASHINGTON -- The commercial space industry came of age at 9:56 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on May, 25, 2012.
The spectacular success of Space Exploration Technologies Inc.’s first attempt to send an unmanned cargo ship to the International Space Station has surprised nearly everyone. Indeed, SpaceX and NASA officials spent a lot of time prior to Tuesday’s (May 22) launch dampening expectations for the test flight, suggesting that merely getting the Dragon spacecraft to orbit for the second time would be considered a success.
Anything beyond that would be considered gravy.
SpaceX and its visionary founder Elon Musk took their time, validated all spacecraft systems before launch (especially navigation and communications units being flown to the space station for the first time), then quickly fixed a faulty main engine valve that delayed the first launch attempt last week. On Tuesday, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket hit a one-second instantaneous launch window and reached orbit without a hitch.
Friday’s climax, the “grappling and berthing” maneuver using the space station’s robotic arm had a few tense moments. Along with sunlight blinding two of Dragon’s thermal imagers, one of its two laser radars used to confirm its position relative to the space station was not functioning properly. Only one radar was needed for the capture maneuver, but mission controllers warned the space station crew that Dragon would abort if the second radar failed. It worked.
“There’s so much that could’ve gone wrong and it went right,” a weary Musk said during a celebratory mission status briefing. “We were able to overcome some last-minute issues with some fast thinking.” Musk said SpaceX had to recalibrate the radar to “tighten the beam, and it worked.”
SpaceX founder Elon Musk