Cargo spacecraft "Dragon CRS-8"

Spacecraft nr:

SpaceX spacecraft nº: 9

Dragon-crs8-NASA patch

Dragon-crs8-SpaceX patch

Description:

• DRAGON CRS-8 is a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station, contracted to NASA. It is the ten flight?? for SpaceX's uncrewed Dragon cargo spacecraft, and the eight?? SpaceX operational mission contracted to NASA under a Commercial Resupply Services contract. The mission brings equipment and supplies to the space station.
• After the retirement of the space shuttle, the Dragon spacecraft is the only vehicle capable of returning large amounts of cargo from the space station to Earth. Russia's crewed Soyuz capsule can only accommodate limited cargo when landing with a three-person crew.
• SpaceX’s fourth Dragon flight of the year (CRS-8) is scheduled to fly on 02 September 2015 and arrive at the station two days later, bringing the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) for robotic installation on the aft CBM of the Tranquility node. As noted in a recent article by AmericaSpace’s Talia Landman, the BEAM will remain affixed to the ISS for two years, providing 565 cubic feet (15.9 cubic meters) of pressurized volume, although it will only be accessed periodically by the crew, in order to conduct routine inspections and the collection of data. Dragon will be unberthed and detached from Harmony nadir on 4 October, allowing HTV-5 to be relocated to the same interface for its own unberthing and departure, a few days later.
• Flight delaited till April 08, 2016.

CRS-8 on launchpad.

Falcon 1st stage after landing.

Mission details:

• Dragon CRS-8 was launched on Falcon 9 F9-023 from Cape Canaveral on Apr 8, 2016. It carries science research, crew supplies and hardware to the orbiting laboratory in support of the Expedition 47 and 48 crews. The new experiments arriving to the station will help investigators study muscle atrophy and bone loss in space, use microgravity to seek insight into the interactions of particle flows at the nanoscale level and use protein crystal growth in microgravity to help in the design of new drugs to fight disease.
  
• The F9-023 first stage performed boostback and reentry burns to successfully land on the ship "Of Course I Still Love You" at 78.50W 30.50N in the Atlantic. This was the second succesful reentry and landing of a Falcon 9 first stage, following the Dec 2015 landing of F9-021 at Cape Canaveral.
• The spacecraft arrived at the capture point 10m from the Harmony module at 11:15 UTC Apr 10, 2016 at which time Jeffrey Williams and Timothy Peake used the station′s robotic arm Canadarm-2 to capture the Dragon spacecraft at 11:23 UTC. Ground commands were sent from Houston to the station′s arm to install Dragon on the bottom side of the Harmony nadir CBM port at 1357 UTC.
• The flight also includes the Bigelow Aerospace expandable habitat module (BEAM). At about 06:00 UTC on Apr 16 the BEAM module was extracted from Dragon′s trunk and installed on the Tranquility module′s aft port at 09:37 UTC.
• CRS-8 was unberthed at 11:02 UTC May 11 and released into space at 13:19 UTC. Dragon fired its thrusters three times to move to a safe distance from the station before being commanded to begin its deorbit burn about 19:00 UTC. The capsule splashed down around 120.1W 31.4N, off the coast of California, at 18:51 UTC.
• The CRS-8 Dragon brought back to Earth the EMU 3011 spacesuit implicated in the Parmitano and Kopra water leaks. EMU 3011 was launched into space on mission STS-132 in 2010. It Also brought back biological samples from astronauts, including those collected during the 11-month-mission of an US astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut ("one-year mission") On board were also the Flock-2b 11 and 12 cubesats which failed to deploy from the ISS last October. Nanoracks deployers NRCSD-5 and NRCSD-6 were also returned to Earth on CRS-8.
  
  

  Falcon 1st stage lands on "Of Course I Still Love You".

  Falcon 1st stage after landing. CRS-8 grappled by ISS Canadarm2.

  
  

External links:

• Wikipedia: Dragon CRS-8 mission

Astrophilately covers:

Dragon SpX-8 launch, cancel CC. Credit: #401

Dragon SpX-8 launch, cancel KSC. Credit: #401

Dragon SpX-8 Berthing, cancel Houston. Credit: #401

Dragon SpX-8 Splashdown, cancel San Diego. Credit: #401

Falcon 9lands on Drone Ship, cancel Corsicana post. Credit: #401