Dragon COTS-1 on the pad

[Dr Mordrid]

Falcon 9/Flight 2 with the COTS-1 Dragon spaceship is on the pad and will undergo fuel/liquid oxygen tanking/detanking and telemetry tests tomorrow. The provisional launch date is Oct. 23, but integration and testing have gone so well that SpaceX has hinted they may ask NASA for an earlier date.

COTS-1 is a test of Dragon's orbital insertion, maneuvering over several orbits, communications, re-entry and landing functions.

If it goes well COTS-2 will do the same, plus an approach to within a few kilometers of the ISS. It's also very possible that COTS-3 will be rolled into COTS-2 if that flight goes smoothly, which means the Dragon would actually dock at the ISS before returning to Earth.

This would mean operational ISS flights could begin as early as next summer, and DragonLab commercial research & military ops flights not long after.

[Dr Mordrid]

Tanking test underway. Looks clean so far....

[Dr Mordrid]

Tanking test successful - engine test "soon"

Second Falcon 9 rocket passes fueling test

SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: September 16, 2010

SpaceX rolled the second Falcon 9 rocket to its seaside Florida launch pad and pumped propellant into the booster's fuel tanks Wednesday in a preflight countdown rehearsal.

A team of launch controllers powered up the two-stage rocket and filled it with kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants Wednesday afternoon, accomplishing a key exercise of the rocket and SpaceX engineers.

The test occurred on pad 40 at Cape Canaveral.

SpaceX has reserved Oct. 23 on the Air Force's Eastern Range for the Falcon 9 to blast off on its second flight. Its payload is the first functional Dragon capsule, which will make between one and three circuits around Earth and splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.

A SpaceX spokesperson said Wednesday's wet dress rehearsal was successful.

The company plans another practice countdown soon that will culminate in a brief ignition of the Falcon's nine Merlin first stage engines, but the spokesperson did not respond to questions on its schedule.
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[Dr Mordrid]

Pictures taken just after vehicle integration -

At some point in early October Dragon will be removed, loaded with 1290 kg of hypergolic fuels for its Draco thrusters (monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide), retested and then reattached to the Falcon 9. This will be done so late in the integration process due to the toxicity of the hypergolics.

In mid-October, a static test firing Falcon 9's first stage engines will be conducted with an expected duration of 3-5 seconds, similar to the tests run prior to the first Falcon 9 launch. The test firing is planned for roughly a week prior to the actual launch. The goal of the static firing is to test the propellant and pneumatic systems, as well as the ground and flight control software that controls pad and launch vehicle configurations.

Very few rockets are even capable of this kind of on-pad test, and it's all due to the re-usable design of the Merlin engine. By the time Merlin's arrive at the pad they've been test fired, individually and as a cluster, for more than the mission duration at SpaceX's Texas test facility in order to prove their reliability. If most other engines were fired like this they'd have to be replaced.

Falcon 9 engine cluster and fairings, 1.1 million lb/f of thrust.


Dragon & nose cone (covers docking port during launch & smooths aerodynamics). Ports surrounded by
black are one of the Draco thruster clusters.