SpaceX encore: 2nd private space station shipment

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A pri­vate com­pany is headed back to the Inter­na­tional Space Station.

On Sun­day night, SpaceX will attempt to launch another Dragon cap­sule full of food, clothes and sci­ence exper­i­ments for the astro­nauts at the space sta­tion. The com­pany hopes to repeat the suc­cess of its test flight in May.

Rainy weather could keep the company’s Fal­con rocket grounded. Fore­cast­ers said Thurs­day there’s a 60 per­cent chance of favor­able con­di­tions for the 8:35 p.m. launch from Cape Canaveral.

This is the Cal­i­for­nia company’s first offi­cial launch under a $1.6 bil­lion con­tract with NASA. The con­tract calls for 12 deliveries.

The Dragon will spend a few weeks at the space sta­tion before being cut loose at the end of Octo­ber with a full load of sci­ence exper­i­ments and old equip­ment. It will para­chute into the Pacific.

Among the items going up and com­ing back on the Dragon are a dozen stu­dent exper­i­ments that flew aboard the SpaceX cap­sule in May, but were not prop­erly acti­vated by the sta­tion crew. NASA offered this sec­ond chance.

NASA is count­ing on pri­vate busi­ness to help keep the space sta­tion stocked, now that the shut­tles are retired. The gov­ern­ments of Rus­sia, Japan and Europe also pro­vide peri­odic sup­ply runs.

A sec­ond com­pany, the Virginia-based Orbital Sci­ences Corp., hopes to launch its Antares rocket with a mockup cap­sule by the end of this year, out of Wal­lops Island. The first test flight to the space sta­tion, by Orbital Sci­ences, is tar­geted for early 2013.

SpaceX — or Space Explo­ration Tech­nolo­gies Corp. — is run by Pay­Pal co-founder Elon Musk, who’s also the chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the elec­tric car-maker, Tesla Motors. He is work­ing to mod­ify the Dragon cap­sule in order to carry astro­nauts back and forth to the space sta­tion, within three to five years. Amer­i­cans cur­rently hitch rides on Russ­ian rockets.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Oct 4 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.