Within a few days after arriving at the space station, the lab’s Canadian-built robotic arm will reach into the Dragon’s trunk and pull out the Bishop airlock module. The upgraded Dragon, or Dragon 2, can carry more equipment to the station, fly for longer periods of time, and will splash down in the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Pacific, expediting the return of time-sensitive biological specimens to scientists. The Dragon set for launch this weekend is the first in a new design of cargo capsules based on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut ferry craft. EST (1830 GMT) Monday, taking aim on a docking port on the zenith, or space-facing, side of the research lab’s Harmony module. Credit: NASA/Kim ShiflettĪssuming the Cargo Dragon takes off Sunday, the SpaceX supply ship approach the space station for docking at 1:30 p.m. Nanoracks technicians work on the Bishop airlock module inside NASA’s Space Station Processing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center in October. Nanoracks will use the airlock to move equipment into and out of the space station, expanding on a similar capability currently provided by an airlock inside the Japanese Kibo lab module. “It’s big enough for people to climb in it.” “If the volume (of Dragon’s trunk) was an inch bigger, our airlock would be, too,” said Mike Lewis, chief innovation officer at Nanoracks. Including support hardware, the airlock weighs about 2,400 pounds (1,090 kilograms) at launch, according to NASA. Its dimensions were constrained by the size of the trunk on the Dragon cargo ship, the only spacecraft capable of ferrying large external payloads to the space station. The bell-shaped module is about the size of a small closet, measuring 6.9 feet (2.1 meters) in diameter and 5.8 feet (1.8 meters) long. The expandable BEAM module from Bigelow Aerospace was also developed by a commercial company, but BEAM launched to the space station under NASA sponsorship. “We’ve been working on the airlock for about five years.” “This is the going to be the first commercial module for the International Space Station, designed and built here at Nanoracks,” said Brock Howe, the company’s project manager for the Bishop airlock. In addition to roughly three tons of fresh food, supplies and experiments for the space station’s seven-person crew, the Dragon cargo craft will deliver the first commercial airlock module to the orbiting outpost. SpaceX called off a launch attempt Saturday due to poor weather in the Falcon 9 booster’s downrange recovery area. Weather permitting, the automated cargo mission is scheduled to take off from pad 39A on top of a Falcon 9 rocket at 11:17 a.m. The Bishop airlock module, owned by Houston-based Nanoracks, is secured inside the unpressurized cargo element of a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship awaiting launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA/Glenn BensonĪ privately-funded airlock from Nanoracks will head for the International Space Station this weekend in the trunk of a SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule, adding to the orbiting lab’s capacity for scientific experiments in another milestone for commercial space development. The Bishop airlock module from Nanoracks undergoes launch preparations inside NASA’s Space Station Processing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center.
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