Station Crew Docks Dragon Capsule to ISS

[readerrrr]

And that is their second launch within 14 days. The previous launch was a satellite to a geostationary orbit.

[bfe]

This 14-day interval between Falcon 9 launches was the fastest consecutive launch since Gemini 7 & 6A in December 4 & 15, 1965.

SpaceX plans to beat that record soon with launches a week apart becoming routine.

[ANH]

Of note, there is an Earth observation instrument, RapidScat, being carried in the Dragon's trunk, which will be (has been?) plucked off the capsule by operators on the ground. This one measures wind. Another, called CATS, will be similarly deployed on the outside of the ISS in December-ish; it will measure clouds and aerosols.

These are part of a collection of low-cost (well, lower than a full satellite) Earth observation instruments to take advantage of the external mount points on the ISS. NASA recently had a media briefing about this: http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/september/nasa-hosts-media-br...

[MrBra]

Is it common to use metric system when launching rockets to space or is it a peculiarity of SpaceX? I heard the speaker on SpaceX channel always referring to kilometers and kilometers per second when talking about height and speed.

[antimagic]

It's common for pretty much all of engineering really. It's ludicrous to make calculations a bit more complicated by using weird non-SI units.

The fact that NASA managed to crash a probe into Mars because they hadn't yet learned the lesson says it all really. Just use SI units and stop worrying about it.

[jimktrains2]

It's common in science in general to use Metric and not Customary. NASA is a/the notable hold out. Engineering is sometimes done in customary because of contracts and such, especially when dealing with government agencies.

While I love Customary volumes (powers of 2 base units), the rest could stand a change and am glad SpaceX is using Metric.

[gambiting]

Is there any sort of engineering anywhere that is not done in SI units nowadays?

[idlewords]

Consider too that a lot of aerospace stuff is done in collaboration with other countries. No one wants to be converting vyorsts to hogsheads all the time.

[quotient]

The metric system contains the SI units. It is extremely commonly used in the scientific setting, due to its capacity for precision and clarity.

[sandstrom]

I've heard it's common in some of em' overseas countries.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/Met...

[aidos]

Whenever I see ISS dockings I wonder why the arm isn't computer controlled. There's no specific information on this page but I'm assuming it was a manual docking. Can anyone explain why the process is still manual?

[drzaiusapelord]

The cynical part of me thinks because manned spaceflight, at least in the context of being stuck in a LEO tin can, is of questionable utility and we try to find things for people to do? We can automate quite a bit of this, in fact, the ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle just docks itself. Wikipedia:

At a distance of 249 m, the ATV computers use videometer and telegoniometer data for final approach and docking manoeuvres. The actual docking to Zvezda is fully automatic. If there are any last-minute problems, a pre-programmed sequence of anti-collision manoeuvres, fully independent of the main navigation system, can be activated by the flight engineers aboard the station.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Transfer_Vehicle

Or what's that apocryphal story about early astronauts fighting with NASA engineers to put in pilot controls with manual override so these guys could claim to be pilots and not mere passengers? The ugly truth is a lot of this stuff is best left to automation, robots, etc.

[VLM]

Best described as a scaling problem with manual or prototype, vs automated.

Lets say you need a prototype ability tool and die maker machinist on staff to handle "things" during development. And you need a simple piece of threaded rod. You could blow a lot of extra time and money on getting a CNC programmer and the software and a numerically controlled lathe or machining center dropped in to make that boring simple little piece of threaded rod. Or you could say, "dude, I know this is beneath your skill, but you're just sitting there burning oxygen and it'll only take ten minutes for you to machine a piece of threaded rod, so ..."

If you have a tool that's designed to do anything, and the tool and op are just sitting there, even if you could automate a one-off, the overall system cost and productivity is higher if the op just does it by hand.

If you have a VERY active schedule, and maybe 3 simultaneously operating 24x7 arms all over the station with only one dude available to run all the arms and everything at 150% of designed thruput capacity etc, then it would make economic sense to automate this task so the arm op can work on something more human oriented, but ...

[FranOntanaya]

I bet the trainers that certify an astronaut is precise enough to get it done are a lot cheaper than the engineers required to certify a computer wouldn't karate chop the station.

[adamfeldman]

In fact the arm can be remotely controlled. As of 2005[1] ground controllers can uplink sequences of commands for the arm to complete. According to an article[2] about this Dragon launch, DEXTRE (two-armed human-like remote manipulator) will be remotely commanded to unpack cargo from the Dragon's unpressurized trunk and mount it on the station. I believe this is not a new thing at all.

[1]: http://www.space.com/1033-remote-access-canadarm-2-hand-grou...

[2]: http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/013/140923arrival/#.VCHgLy...

[kordless]

Here's more info on the arm: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements...

[markab21]

Does anyone know what happens to the pod after a shuttle-craft docks and delivers cargo?

Do they push it back to earth? Into space, leave it in orbit?

[shirro]

It stays on the ISS while it is emptied and loaded for the return trip. Dragon is the only vehicle with a substantial down mass capability (3000kg) so it can return with things that need fixing and completed experiments etc. Shuttle is retired and Progress, ATV, HTV and Cygnus are one way trips so only good for taking out the garbage. Soyuz is full of people.

They set Dragon free with the arm, Dragon departs, does a de-orbit burn, jettisons the trunk (with the solar arrays), re-enters the atmosphere and parachutes down into the ocean and is recovered.

[andyjohnson0]

It will stay at the ISS for a month to allow cargo transfer [1]. Then it returns to earth under its own power and is re-used after refurbishment [2].

[1] http://www.nasa.gov/content/expedition-41-trio-waits-for-dra...

[2] http://www.spaceflight101.com/dragon-spacecraft-information....

[jackgavigan]

The ISS crew load it up with cargo to be returned to Earth. It makes a controlled re-entry, splashes down in the Pacific and is recovered.

[mariocesar]

Tomorrow is happening today

[s369610]

"support 255 research investigations", I hope that 255 is just a coincidence and that research isn't limited by 8 bits

[bvm]

It's technically a berthing, not a docking as it mates under the power of the Candarm, not under its own steam.

[mzaccari]

Thank you for the clarification. I corrected the title

[xyclos]

correct, and the body of the article correctly identifies it as such.

[idlewords]

MATES UNDER THE POWER OF THE CANADARM