The Crew Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX has successfully returned to the Port Canaveral aboard the recovery vessel Go Searcher. The spacecraft wraps up the orbital launch debut that has been tracked by the NASA. It was the first successful crewed launched the private space agency.
The Commercial Crew Program Deputy Manager, Steve Stich said that the spacecraft "did better than [NASA] expected." Thus, the Space X's Director of Crew Mission Management, Benji Reed said that "I can't believe how well the whole mission has gone. I think on every point, everything's been nailed, all the way along-particularly this last piece. We were all very excited to see re-entry and parachute and drogue deploy and main deploy, splashdown-everything happened just perfectly, right on time the way that we expected it to. It was beautiful," according to NASA.
Benji Reed's unqualified appraisal on the debut of the Crew Dragon serves as a perfect example of the attitude. It is also, almost universal throughout the company in the twilight of the completion of the mission. However, sources suggested that there were more than a few hiccups during the mission. It was extremely mild and came as no surprise for what effectively amounted to the first launch of the mission. Notably, it is a brand-new vehicle.
As follows, with such a complex spacecraft with a clean-sheet design, it is quite extraordinary that its debut launch was so utterly free of significant anomalies or unexpected behavior. The mission was separated into the distinct phases of its launching. From free-flight, docking and undocking at the ISS and the recovery. The Crew Dragon has reportedly performed all cases perfectly. According to Mr. Reed, it was "right on time." Steve Stich, on the other hand, was also equally enthusiastic and elated about the performance of the spacecraft.
Crew Dragon is on SpaceX’s recovery vessel—completing the spacecraft’s first test mission! pic.twitter.com/6K0qgnHd4O — SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 8, 2019
As follows, Steve Stich added that on-orbit they got a lot of great data on the vehicle in terms of the thermal performance and power performance. Thus, the vehicle performed really well then they have expected. "Then the rendezvous was phenomenal as we came in and checked out those sensors," according to Teslarati.
Today, the undocking of the spacecraft went flawlessly as Mr. Stich watched the systems performed. He said that it is a very tight sequence between the undocking and de-orbit burn. "How the nose cone performed, how the de-orbit burn was executed, then the entry was phenomenal." However, he added that "I don't think we saw really anything in the mission so far-and we've got to do to the data reviews-that would preclude us from having the crewed mission [DM-2] later this year."