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Dragon Space Capsule Faces Trouble in Orbit

by VOA News March 01, 2013

After a successful Friday liftoff, SpaceX's privately-owned Falcon 9 rocket, which is carrying the Dragon resupply capsule to the International Space Station, encountered trouble in orbit.

Nine minutes after launch, the rocket maker's billionaire founder, Elon Musk, reported a problem with the Dragon spacecraft's maneuvering thrusters.

After the capsule separated from the second stage of the launch rocket and reached Earth orbit, three of four sets of thrusters did not activate normally.

But mission engineers appear to have partially solved the problem, deploying twin solar panels to provide power to the orbiting craft.

The unmanned Dragon capsule, designed and built by the private U.S. spacecraft developer, is scheduled to rendezvous with the orbiting space station complex early Saturday.

Astronauts aboard the space station will use a grappling arm to secure Dragon and pull it into docking position. The spacecraft will remain berthed at the ISS for three weeks.

This is SpaceX's second resupply mission to the station.

The capsule is carrying about 600 kilograms of supplies for the space station's six-person crew, as well as material to support the crew's ongoing research activities.

Dragon will return with about 1,200 kilograms of cargo, including crew supplies, scientific study results and space station hardware.

The capsule is scheduled to return to Earth on March 25 with a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Baja California, Mexico.

NASA has contracted SpaceX, an 11-year-old California firm, to carry out at least 12 resupply missions to the space station over the next several years.

Its first successful docking with the orbiting facility was last May, and the company began routine commercial resupply missions in October.

Since the termination of the U.S. space shuttle program, the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft have been the only U.S. vehicles capable of ferrying cargo, and eventually crew, to the space station.