![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneSaturday saw the launch of the Crew Dragon that will bring home the two stranded astronauts from the ISS early next year. Everything went according to plan - mostly. The capsule has docked with the ISS, the first stage booster landed on its recovery ship safely. But the second stage booster did not land within the planned recovery area at sea. As a result, SpaceX is temporarily suspending launches until the get a better understanding as to why this happened.
While the sea is a large space, there are 'space graveyard' zones in it that deorbiting things are supposed to hit and that are no-go zones during certain times, such as this. To miss such a scheduled window imperils shipping and is no bueno.
https://www.space.com/spacex-pause-launches-crew-9-falcon-9-issue
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/engineers-investigate-another-malfunction-on-spacexs-falcon-9-rocket/
In other ISS news, there's a bit of a concerning problem. There is a crack in the tunnel connecting the Russian module to the Soyuz docking port, and it is leaking air.
Now, the air leak actually isn't that big of a deal. They allow for this, and have known about it since it was first detected in September 2019. But things have gotten worse.
From the article: "...in February of this year NASA identified an increase in the leak rate from less than 1 pound of atmosphere a day to 2.4 pounds a day, and in April this rate increased to 3.7 pounds a day."
Uh... people? Maybe you might want to do something about this?
For now, they're mitigating risk by keeping the hatch leading to the module closed. If they can't figure out a way to fix this, they'll have to keep the hatch permanently closed, reducing the number of docking ports from four to three.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/nasa-confirms-space-station-cracking-a-highest-risk-and-consequence-problem/
While the sea is a large space, there are 'space graveyard' zones in it that deorbiting things are supposed to hit and that are no-go zones during certain times, such as this. To miss such a scheduled window imperils shipping and is no bueno.
https://www.space.com/spacex-pause-launches-crew-9-falcon-9-issue
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/engineers-investigate-another-malfunction-on-spacexs-falcon-9-rocket/
In other ISS news, there's a bit of a concerning problem. There is a crack in the tunnel connecting the Russian module to the Soyuz docking port, and it is leaking air.
Now, the air leak actually isn't that big of a deal. They allow for this, and have known about it since it was first detected in September 2019. But things have gotten worse.
From the article: "...in February of this year NASA identified an increase in the leak rate from less than 1 pound of atmosphere a day to 2.4 pounds a day, and in April this rate increased to 3.7 pounds a day."
Uh... people? Maybe you might want to do something about this?
For now, they're mitigating risk by keeping the hatch leading to the module closed. If they can't figure out a way to fix this, they'll have to keep the hatch permanently closed, reducing the number of docking ports from four to three.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/nasa-confirms-space-station-cracking-a-highest-risk-and-consequence-problem/
