Space Exploration Technologies plans to fly its second Dragon capsule on Nov. 30 -- and park it at the International Space Station, combining two test flights into one.
The company, also known as SpaceX, is one of two companies NASA has hired to take over cargo runs to the station in the post-space shuttle era. The other firm, Orbital Sciences Corp., plans to debut is Cygnus capsule next year.
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Final approval for SpaceX to dock at the station won't come until after the Dragon is safely in orbit. The next space station crew, which is launching on Sept. 22 on a Russian Soyuz rocket, has been to SpaceX's Hawthorne, Calif., facility to be trained on Dragon systems.
"There's a point where we will basically command (the Dragon) into free drift,” NASA astronaut Dan Burbank told Discovery News. “We'll tell its motion control system to stop firing the jets and then it allows us at that point to bring the space station robotic arm up and then very gently and carefully capture it."
Burbank and his crewmates on the station would then fly the robot arm and Dragon over to a docking port on the Harmony node, near the shuttle's now-mothballed berthing slip.
That's essentially the same maneuver for berthing Japan's HTV freighter, Burbank adds.
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After a successfully demo run, SpaceX would be able to begin working off its $1.6 billion cargo delivery contract with NASA. The company also is working to upgrade the Dragon to fly astronauts -- and potentially tourists, researchers and other people as well.
Dragon flies on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from the company launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
(Dragon 1's orbital debut in December 2010. Credit: SpaceX)
Tags: Astronauts, NASA, Private Spaceflight, Space Station
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