Spare parts warehoused in the the United States and Russia will help Boeing finish assembly of a third space station docking port to receive arriving astronauts aboard Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules, replacing a unit lost in a Falcon 9 launch failure last year.
The International Space Station’s robotic arm, under the control of engineers on Earth, extracted an experimental inflatable habitat from the trunk of SpaceX’s Dragon supply ship Saturday and attached it to the orbiting complex.
SpaceX’s Dragon supply ship executed a laser-guided rendezvous with the International Space Station early Sunday, delivering an experimental expandable enclosure for attachment to the complex later this month for tests to verify the inflatable design’s suitability for future space habitats.
The SpaceX Dragon cargo ship loaded with supplies, crew provisions, new science experiments and an experimental expandable module for the International Space Station arrived Sunday morning for rendezvous, capture and berthing.
The commercial SpaceX Dragon cargo-delivery craft with the experimental BEAM module — the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module — arrives at the International Space Station two days after launching from Cape Canaveral.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral on Friday afternoon, sending a Dragon cargo freighter on the way to the International Space Station as the launcher’s first stage booster returned to Earth aboard a floating platform.
NASA and SpaceX hold the post-launch and -landing press conference from Kennedy Space Center on April 8 after the successful flight of the Falcon 9 rocket
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster descended under engine power to a floating landing platform in the Atlantic Ocean on Friday, notching the first-ever rocket landing at sea minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral with a supply ship hauling 3.5 tons of cargo to the International Space Station.
This video replay shows the Falcon 9 rocket’s flight from liftoff until deployment of the Dragon supply ship, including the dramatic touchdown on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.