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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spaceship nears first orbital launch test

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7 years ago

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After roughly five years of concerted development, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has released the first official photo of the company’s Crew Dragon, a version of their orbital spacecraft designed and optimized to reliably return humans to orbit from United States soil.

Traceable back to the very beginning of SpaceX’s first Dragon development program, where the company hoped to easily modify the Cargo Dragon capsule design to support crewed missions, the results of the years of work that followed instead focused on an extensive redesign originally intended to be capable of powered landings similar to Falcon 9 boosters. However, likely the result of an immense certification burden to ever hope to have NASA okay its operational usage, SpaceX chose to kill the landing program in favor of a more traditional ocean splashdown style of return. Extendable leglets were thus removed from the design’s heat shield, a change that also ended any hopes of SpaceX’s plans to partner with NASA and land an unprecedented payload on the surface of Mars, known as Red Dragon.

That announcement came in the summer of 2017. Ten quiet months later, Musk confirmed April updates from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program managers with a photo of the first flight-worthy Crew Dragon in SpaceX’s anechoic chamber, ahead of shipment to NASA’s Plum Brook facility for full-up spacecraft testing in vacuum conditions.

While it may look like a completely different design, much of Crew Dragon has a significant level of heritage with the readily flight-proven Cargo Dragon spacecraft, including avionics, parachutes, heat shield expertise, and Draco maneuvering thrusters. The most obvious difference can be found in the four black bays spaced evenly around the edge of the capsule – these contain two SuperDraco thrusters each (eight total) that together act as an integrated launch abort system, capable of launching the capsule and trunk to safety in fractions of a second in the event of Falcon 9 failure at any point during launch. A test of this hardware was first completed almost exactly three years ago, demonstrating acceleration from stand-still to 100 mph in less than a single second.

The hardware shown in Elon Musk’s photo is not intended to carry humans (not on its first flight, at least), instead aiming to be the first Crew Dragon article to make it into Earth orbit, where SpaceX technicians and engineers will conduct and observe a vast fleet of tests with the intent of proving the craft’s capabilities. If successful, this mission (known as DM-1) will be the final step SpaceX needs to complete before DM-2, the upgraded spacecraft’s first real crewed mission.

As of now, DM-1 and DM-2 are officially scheduled for no earlier than (NET) August 31 and December 31 respectively. However, those dates are very unlikely to hold. Per sources with knowledge of Crew Dragon’s progress, DM-2 is currently scheduled for launch NET 2019, likely sometime in the first or second quarter. DM-1, while certainly not ready for an August 31 launch, does appear to be tracking towards a launch later this year, most likely in Q4 2018. SpaceX technicians are working around the clock to ready this groundbreaking hardware for its trip to Plum Brook and eventually to space, spending long shifts in the belly of the Dragon to ensure everything is working as intended.

 

Falcon 9 Block 5, which successfully completed its inaugural launch earlier this month, is another critical path for SpaceX’s first crewed mission (DM-2). As of now, NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) has advised NASA to require seven full-up successful launches of the Block 5 iteration before allowing crew to fly on the rocket. In order for SpaceX to achieve that milestone in time for a crewed launch in early 2019, Falcon 9 Block 5 will need to fly (and refly) flawlessly over the course of the second half of 2018. While unclear if ASAP will accept flight-proven launches of the upgraded rocket for its fairly arbitrary “seven launches” requirement, SpaceX will need to rely heavily on Block 5 reflights if they hope to complete as many as 30 launches total this year.

As of now, the next launch of Falcon 9 Block 5 is likely to occur sometime in June, with three total Block 5 flights tentatively scheduled before mid-July. If SpaceX can pull those launches off, it will act as a huge bode of confidence for the future of the rocket, as well as the future of Crew Dragon.

Crew Dragon tests its SuperDraco-powered launch abort system. (SpaceX)

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Armored Tesla Cybertruck “War Machine” debuts at Defense Expo 2025

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1 week ago

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February 24, 2025

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Photo: Unplugged Performance

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Tesla Megapacks chosen for 548 MWh energy storage project in Japan

Tesla plans to supply over 100 Megapack units to support a large stationary storage project in Japan, making it one of the country’s largest energy storage facilities.

Published

1 month ago

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February 3, 2025

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla’s Megapack grid-scale batteries have been selected to back an energy storage project in Japan, coming as the latest of the company’s continued deployment of the hardware.

As detailed in a report from Nikkei this week, Tesla plans to supply 142 Megapack units to support a 548 MWh storage project in Japan, set to become one of the country’s largest energy storage facilities. The project is being overseen by financial firm Orix, and it will be located at a facility Maibara in central Japan’s Shiga prefecture, and it aims to come online in early 2027.

The deal is just the latest of several Megapack deployments over the past few years, as the company continues to ramp production of the units. Tesla currently produces the Megapack at a facility in Lathrop, California, though the company also recently completed construction on its second so-called “Megafactory” in Shanghai China and is expected to begin production in the coming weeks.

READ MORE ON TESLA MEGAPACKS: Tesla Megapacks help power battery supplier Panasonic’s Kyoto test site

Tesla’s production of the Megapack has been ramping up at the Lathrop facility since initially opening in 2022, and both this site and the Shanghai Megafactory are aiming to eventually reach a volume production of 10,000 Megapack units per year. The company surpassed its 10,000th Megapack unit produced at Lathrop in November.

During Tesla’s Q4 earnings call last week, CEO Elon Musk also said that the company is looking to construct a third Megafactory, though he did not disclose where.

Last year, Tesla Energy also had record deployments of its Megapack and Powerwall home batteries with a total of 31.4 GWh of energy products deployed for a 114-percent increase from 2023.

Other recently deployed or announced Megapack projects include a massive 600 MW/1,600 MWh facility in Melbourne, a 75 MW/300 MWh energy storage site in Belgium, and a 228 MW/912 MWh storage project in Chile, along with many others still.

What are your thoughts? Let me know at zach@teslarati.com, find me on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send us tips at tips@teslarati.com.

Tesla highlights the Megapack site replacing Hawaii’s last coal plant

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Elon Musk responds to Ontario canceling $100M Starlink deal amid tariff drama

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said, opens new tab on February 3 that he was “ripping up” his province’s CA$100 million agreement with Starlink in response to the U.S. imposing tariffs on Canadian goods.

Published

1 month ago

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February 3, 2025

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NORAD and USNORTHCOM Public Affairs, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk company SpaceX is set to lose a $100 million deal with the Canadian province of Ontario following a response to the Trump administration’s decision to apply 25 percent tariffs to the country.

Starlink, a satellite-based internet service launched by the Musk entity SpaceX, will lose a $100 million deal it had with Ontario, Premier Doug Ford announced today.

Ford said on X today that Ontario is banning American companies from provincial contracts:

“We’ll be ripping up the province’s contract with Starlink. Ontario won’t do business with people hellbent on destroying our economy. Canada didn’t start this fight with the U.S., but you better believe we’re ready to win it.”

It is a blow to the citizens of the province more than anything, as the Starlink internet constellation has provided people in rural areas across the globe stable and reliable access for several years.

Musk responded in simple terms, stating, “Oh well.”

It seems Musk is less than enthused about the fact that Starlink is being eliminated from the province, but it does not seem like all that big of a blow either.

As previously mentioned, this impacts citizens more than Starlink itself, which has established itself as a main player in reliable internet access. Starlink has signed several contracts with various airlines and maritime companies.

It is also expanding to new territories across the globe on an almost daily basis.

With Mexico already working to avoid the tariff situation with the United States, it will be interesting to see if Canada does the same.

The two have shared a pleasant relationship, but President Trump is putting his foot down in terms of what comes across the border, which could impact Americans in the short term.

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