[Launch postponed to May 30 due to weather conditions] Historical launch of Demo-2: today SpaceX will send people to the ISS

Last Friday, May 22, the Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon manned ship passed the Flight Readiness Review - a standard operation for launches from the shuttle era. FRR was originally supposed to end on Thursday, but the analysis lasted 2 days. SpaceX, NASA and ISS operations personnel praised the safety of the spacecraft and the launch vehicle. NASA's administrator said it allows the launch of SpaceX. On the same day, SpaceX successfully conducted rocket fire tests.

On the weekend, SpaceX held a dress rehearsal for the launch. The crew of the ship came to him in flight suits, the staff worked out the basic procedures - only the rocket was not fueled. This Monday, May 25, the rocket passedLaunch Readiness Review In its course, NASA rated the probability of crew loss at 1 in 276.

A series of strictly planned inspections and press conferences hides the uniqueness of this launch behind a routine. Today, May 27 , at 16:33 local time ( at 23:33 Moscow time ) SpaceX plans to launch people into orbit. For the first time since 2011, an American astronaut will go into orbit of the Earth from American territory on an American rocket. For the first time in the world, a private space company will launch a man into space. For the first time, when a person launches, the first stage of the rocket will be saved for reuse.

Photo source on the left: Elon Musk.

Commercial Crew Program

On February 1, 2003, the Columbia space shuttle collapsed at the final stage of a 16-day flight. When the shuttle was launched, the shuttle chip in the shuttle's external fuel tank detached and damaged the carbon fiber panel of the Columbia's left wing. Upon entering the dense layers of the atmosphere, hot gases penetrated inside the wing and destroyed the structure of the left wing. The shuttle lost stability and fell apart. All crew members died.

Prior to this, the loss of the shuttle claimed the lives of people: 17 years earlier, in 1986, the Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch. Even without danger, aging shuttles were expensive to operate, and the accident of any of them put the whole fleet on the joke. At the same time, the United States had to continue to fulfill its obligations under the program of the International Space Station, which was then not only actively built due to the modules being thrown by the shuttles, but also required a regular crew change.

The Columbia accident created an occasion to change priorities in the US space program. In the early 2000s, NASA hatched plans for a cheap orbital aircraft specifically for the ISS Orbital Space Plane . Instead, the Crew Exploration Vehicle project was proposed.. For the Constellation program, Lockheed Martin Corporation has proposed the construction of the Orion spacecraft, which would deliver 4 Americans to the moon per flight. To supply the ISS, this ship in a six-seater configuration would be launched on the Ares-I - a small rocket in comparison with the lunar project Ares-V.


Attempts of the last 15 years to assemble a new astronautics from the spare parts

The only launch of Ares-I took place in 2009. Soon, the Obama administration approved a decision from the US Congress to freeze funding for the Constellation program. Instead of the predecessor Republican program, the Democratic President proposed a flight plan to Mars. Orion became a spacecraft for exploring deep space beyond Earth's orbit, and not an instrument for building a lunar colony. Ares-V simply disappeared in favor of the super-heavy SLS rocket.

To deliver astronauts to the ISS, it is enough to give out contracts directly to corporations, not to plan everything inside NASA, they decided in 2011. The private trader has already handled the cargoes: under the Commercial Resupply Services program , the Orbital ATK and SpaceX companies created unmanned ships Cygnus and Dragon, which successfully deliver cargoes to the ISS.

ProgramCommercial Crew Program - this is no longer trucking, but human delivery. The U.S. Space Agency has begun financing the development of ships from several competing companies.


NASA and US Army employees are working with a landed test copy of Starliner, NASA .

There are two main applicants for the title of conqueror of private space. SpaceX has transformed the Dragon truck into a manned Crew Dragon (aka Dragon 2). Boeing Corporation introduced Starliner .

Ship requirements

Launching a man into orbit, as well as creating a reliable cargo ship, is not an easy task even for a giant in the aerospace industry with a century of history. For example, the first test flight of the Starliner last December ended unsuccessfully : the Boeing ship did not enter the calculated orbit. There were no people on board. It later turned out that the software was not tested properly. Engineers did not have time to test the software to the end, the vice president of Boeing admitted - is the company's management culture to blame ?

To transform Dragon into a manned ship, it is not enough to simply throw a couple of oxygen cylinders into it. Even at the design stage, other requirements are laid in the ship. For example, a safety margin of 1.25 is required from unmanned vehicles , and 1.4 from manned ships . For the duration of the flight, the hull of the manned spacecraft with a probability of 0.99995 must withstand collisions with space debris.

NASA makes extensive demands on ships for people to provide a liveable environment. The ship should both protect the crew from external dangers (cosmic radiation, temperature differences), and not create new ones inside (there can be no sharp surfaces). Management systems must be designed in such a way that small human error does not lead to fatal consequences.

Douglas Hurley’s son has not yet landed in Florida, but already sees a rocket on which his father will fly into space. May 24, 2020.

For each of the ship’s systems, NASA requires that one failure allow the possibility of further flight, and two failures mean the safety of the flight interruption. It is necessary to isolate the failed subsystems and switch to the reserve. In this case, the team on Earth must monitor and, if necessary, manage critical systems of the ship.

Lists of requirements are most often known only to specialists. The layman distinguishes an unmanned cargo ship from a manned one by the presence of a crew rescue system.

April 20, 2019 ground tests of the Crew Dragon emergency rescue system resulted in a ship explosion. This only slightly moved the deadlines. In January 2020, the test was successfully repeated already in real flight without breaking the capsule.

The very name of the first manned launch of Demo-2 hints that this is the second demonstration flight. On March 2, 2019, SpaceX, as part of Demo-1, SpaceX launched the Crew Dragon ship on the ISS, but without a crew. The ship successfully docked with the ISS and returned to Earth on March 8.

Ship crew

SpaceX promised up to 7 people on board the Crew Dragon, but NASA will use only 4 seats. In the first launch, 2 astronauts will fly.

The launch of Demo-2 involves commander Douglas Hurley and pilot Robert Benken. For both this flight is the third, only Benken went out into outer space - 6 times. Both astronauts had flown to the ISS on shuttles twice before and actively participated in the construction of the station. NASA has published photos of its astronauts in flying spacesuits.


From left to right: Hurley and Benken.

53-year-old Marine Colonel Douglas Hurley was admitted to the astronaut squad in 2000. In July 2009, he made the first space flight on the Endeavor shuttle, the second flight of his career - the very Atlantis STS-135, which closed the Space Shuttle program. On Earth, Hurley tested F-22 aircraft, flew both the F-15 and F-16. Hurley is familiar with cosmonaut training in Star City in Russia: as a NASA employee, he worked at the Yu.A. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

The 49-year-old “commander of the combined activities” of the Demo-2 mission Benken has the rank of colonel of the US Air Force and a doctorate in mechanical engineering. In the launches of the shuttle Endeavor STS-123 and STS-130, Bob Benken participated as a flight specialist and worked a lot in outer space.

The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket is marked with the NASA 1975 worm logo, which the agency abandoned in 1992 in favor of a round meatball. The logo is made in the best traditions of futurism of the 70s. NASA .

The backup crew is Michael Hopkins and Victor Glover. Only one of them flew into space before that - it was Hopkins on the Russian Soyuz TMA-10M.

The main crew spent the last week in quarantine . This measure is not dictated by the spread of coronavirus, it is standard practice when sending people to the ISS. NASA has only additionally limited staff who approach Hurley and Benken at a sneeze distance, and visitors to launch sites and even VIPs measure temperature.

Flight plan

Cancellation of the launch is possible due to bad weather. Poor conditions mean that the launch will be delayed for backup days. A strong wind disrupts the emergency rescue system, a lightning strike disables the electronics , and such a trifle as starting in too cold weather takes lives . There are reasons for each monitored atmospheric parameter .

For the first manned launch in 9 years and for the first attempt at a private space transport, the weather will be monitored especially closely. The forecast of the 45th weather reconnaissance squadron dated May 25 issued only 40% of the probability of favorable weather conditions for launching.



May 26 outlook improved: 60% chance of successful conditions. Precautions are precipitation, cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds.

The ISS orbit parameters dictate a limited window for launching the spacecraft to the station. If the launch does not take place today, May 27, then additional windows are available on Saturday, May 30, at 22:22 Moscow time and on Sunday, May 31, at 22:00 Moscow time. For Saturday weather forecasters the probability of favorable weather was estimated at 70%.

The rise of the crew today is not the earliest - at 9 in the morning. At 12:15 local time, approximately 4 hours 15 minutes before launch, the crew will be instructed on weather conditions and all the main media broadcasts will begin. 2 hours 55 minutes before taking off from Earth, the crew arrives at the launch pad LC-39A. An hour later, two astronauts will close the hatches of the ship from the inside, being already at the very top of the rocket, on which they will fly into space today.


The launch pad LC-39A boasts a rich history. From here a man was launched to the moon ( Apollo 11 ). From here, the shuttle first sailed into space ( STS-1 ). Today, the launch site is rented by a private SpaceX company.

The decision to refuel the rocket will be made45 minutes before the start. 37 minutes before launch, the emergency crew rescue system will be activated. After 2 minutes, 35 minutes before starting, the supply of kerosene to both stages and liquid oxygen to the first will begin. 16 minutes before start-up, the second stage will start refueling with liquid oxygen.

The rest of the operations of the Falcon 9 are no different from starting without people on board: they are switching to internal power supply, pre-cooling the engines and final checks minutes before the separation from the launch pad.

At 23:33 Moscow time (at 16:33 local time), the Falcon 9 rocket with a payload, the Crew Dragon ship, will take off from the Launch Pad 39A launch pad.



The process of flying with the naked eye will be difficult to distinguish from two dozen launches of Dragon cargo ships before. The rocket will fly northeast of the Kennedy Space Center.

At 58 seconds, the rocket will experience maximum load on the structure, and the hosts of the video broadcasts will emphasize that the Falcon 9 has passed the so-called Max Q. Nine engines of the first stage will turn off 2 minutes 33 seconds after launch. After another three seconds, she will separate from the rocket and live her life: she will head for landing on the floating platform Of Course I Still Love You. If the landing is successful, the first stage can be reused.

The second stage will turn off after 8 minutes 47 seconds after the start of the flight. 12 minutes after launch, the ship will separate from the second stage. The crew will check the operation of the main systems. Then the ship will begin maneuvers for phasing the orbit and approaching the ISS. NASA did not name the exact completion dates for the orbital maneuvers, but it is likely that they will take up to 2 days.



The Crew Dragon spacecraft is able to dock with the ISS in automatic mode, but if necessary, astronauts - on board the ship and on the ISS - will dock manually.

After docking with the PMA-2 adapter on the front port of the Harmony module and equalizing the pressure, a hug will follow with the crew of expedition 63. Now there are 2 American astronauts and 4 Russian cosmonauts at the station: commander Christopher Cassidy, flight engineers Anatoly Ivanishin, Ivan Wagner, Sergey Ryzhikov, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Stephen Bowen.

NASA does not say exactly how long Crew Dragon will be docked to the ISS. Crew Dragon is designed to stay up to 110 days in orbit. Being in space can be extended up to 210 days, but in this case, solar panels will begin to degrade. At a press conference on May 1, Steve Stitch, deputy for the commercial manned launch program, made a vague statement that the ship would be in orbit from 30 to 119 days.


SpaceX's Go Navigator, which will save the crew from the ocean.

After undocking, the ship will move away from the station by at least 200 meters, change its orbit parameters and shoot the service module - the so-called “trunk”. The capsule will turn on the engines to get out of orbit, enter the atmosphere, open four parachutes of the third modification and be brought off the Atlantic coast of Florida. Next, the crew of the sea ship will evacuate the space crew and deliver to Cape Canaveral.

The nominal functioning of the spacecraft and the launch vehicle means Crew Dragon certification for the delivery of the crew to the ISS this year. In the first real flight, USCV-1 or Crew-1 will be delivered to the ISS by 4 astronauts at once.

Government funding for the company, which helped abandon seats in the Russian Soyuz, will be generous. But even without this, SpaceX is not in poverty: in a recent round of investments, the company raised $ 346 million with a target of 250 million. With an estimated capitalization of $ 36 billion, SpaceX is one of the most expensive companies that do not trade publicly.

Where to watch the launch

The US space agency is forced to severely knock money out of the budget with an extensive media presence. NASA has its own television channel, which is broadcast on the Internet. SpaceX also does not shy away from publicity and covers every launch with the participation of leading and crowd extras.

The main video broadcasts will be held with comments in English.

Broadcasts are already underway. If you are lucky with the weather, the rocket will be launched at 23:33 Moscow time .

Broadcast Demo-2 on the SpaceX channel on YouTube

NASA TV on YouTube
Page with links to streaming methods and NASA TV applications on the NASA website

Updated 2020-05-27 23:25: The launch was postponed for a reserve day due to adverse weather conditions. The next attempt to launch Demo-2 will take place on May 30 at 22:22 Moscow time.