Four private astronauts finished a mission to a space vehicle on Friday, launching waters near Oceanside, California.
It was the first time the company had brought people back to the Earth in the Pacific Ocean, after six years of its dragon capsule to launch from Florida to the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico.
The Fram2 mission had rotated the Earth for four days in a north-south orbit. The journey was the first time people were able to look straight to the north and southern poles from the orbit.
SpaceX moved its activities to the Pacific to eliminate the problem of dragon residues that fall to random parts of the earth. The Pacific is the largest water tank on the planet and the weather along the western coast of the United States tends to be very nice, and offers more days favorable for the return of astronauts.
The first astronaut SpaceX, a trial flight in May 2020 with Douglas Hurley and NASA’s Robert Behnken on board, started at the International Space Station. Just over two months later, they returned to Earth, launching in the waters of the Gulf by Pensacola, Fla. This was the first flight using the upgraded Dragon 2 Capsule Design of SpaceX.
Fourteen other astronaut missions followed – nine flights funded by NASA, five private – as well as 10 cargo shipments for NASA receiving equipment and supplies to the International Space Station. Everyone fell safely from Florida.
However, the pieces of the trunk of the spacecraft-the cylindrical section under the capsule that launched before the readmission-fall into unexpected parts: a sheep field in Australia. A farm in Saskatchewan, Canada. and a hiking trail in North Carolina.
No one was injured and there was no damage to the property. Hoping for constant good fortune, however, it will not be considered sufficient protection against a constant rain of space debris.
SpaceX said he had predicted that the trunk of the spacecraft would be completely burned in the heat of the re -entry. Because this turned out to be the case, SpaceX last year announced changes it was planning to make for the dragon landings.
First, the trunk will later be launched on the return trip, after the spacecraft had shooted the promoters to leave the orbit. This allows for the targeting of debris and the Pacific Ocean provides a large, not most populous area of ​​water where debris will not raise danger to humans.
Before these changes, the dragon’s trunk remained in orbit for weeks to months without predicting where it would reinstate.
For NASA, it will also help plan its missions because of the calmer weather in the Pacific.
In October, the return of a dragons capsule with four astronauts from the space station was delayed for two weeks, first by Hurricane Milton, who swept Florida and then continuing the stormy conditions and unstable seas.
Spacex had moved Dragon landings to Florida partially to meet NASA’s requirements for faster processing science experiments returning from space. It will also take SpaceX more to carry the capsules back to Florida for preparations for its next flight.
The latest landing on the east coast happened last month with the return of a NASA mission from the space station that brought back two NASA astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. Their stay was stretched in unhindered nine months due to problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they had taken. The flight ended with a fantastic moment, as a dolphin bulletin explored the spacecraft and the boats that had traveled to recover it.
To send FRAM2 this week, Chun Wang, an investor who made his luck in blockchain and encryption mining, paid an unsecured amount. He chooses three people to accompany him: Jannicke Mikkelsen, Norwegian director. Rabea Rogge, Robotics Researcher from Germany. And Eric Philips, an Australian explorer who specializes in missions in the polar regions.
Mr Wang named the mission after FRAM, a Norwegian ship investigating the Arctic in the 19th century.
Provided a series of updates from Orbit, 270 miles above Earth’s surface, including initial start.
“The disease of space movement hit all of us – we felt nausea and ended up in vomiting sometimes,” he wrote in X. “He felt different from the movement disease in a car or at sea.
He said that the movement disease had left the second morning.
The Splashdowns Astronauts in the Pacific were common in a previous season of Spaceflight, with most of NASA’s Apollo missions landing there.
Pacific landings are also a return to SpaceX in the past. Twenty missions using a previous version of the company’s Dragon capsule to carry the cargo to the space station from 2012 to 2020 everything was splash there.
There is no word about whether the west coast dolphins will be just as curious.
