posted 05-25-2024 03:10 PM               

The discovery of Dragon trunk debris from the Crew-7 mission in North Carolina, following debris from the Ax- 3 trunk in Saskatchewan and from the Crew-1 trunk in Australia, makes it clear that the materials from the trunk regularly survive reentry in large chunks.

Twenty-three (23) Dragon-2 (crew or cargo) trunks have now made uncontrolled reentries. The time and location of three of the reentries is uncertain by an hour or more. For the remaining 20, ten came in over the ocean. Five crashed in remote regions in Brazil, Uganda, Sudan, and Arabia.

Of the remaining five, three have had large debris chunks found on the ground. The remaining two are Crew-2 (Kazakh-Russian border near the Yasniy spaceport, 2022 Sep 28) and Crew-5 (east of Colorado Springs, 2023 Apr 27).

There's a chance debris from the Crew-5 trunk could still be found in Colorado along the reentry path, or could have been found but not widely reported.

Above: Suspected SpaceX Dragon trunk debris from the Ax-3 mission as found in Saskatchewan, Canada. (Adam Bent/CBC)

Above: Suspected SpaceX Dragon trunk debris from the Crew-7 mission as found in North Carolina. (Marc Liverman/WLOS)

posted 06-20-2024 09:57 AM               

In 2023, trunk debris that supported NASA's Space Crew-5 re-entered over Colorado, and recently, debris from a private astronaut mission, Axiom Mission 3 (Ax-3), was found in Saskatchewan, Canada, following the deorbit of its trunk on Feb. 26, 2024. Most recently, the trunks that supported Space's 30th commercial services resupply and Crew-7 missions re-entered over Saudi Arabia and North Carolina respectively. NASA is unaware of any structural damage or injuries resulting from these findings. Previously, in 2022, trunk debris from Crew-1 was discovered in Australia.

There is another trunk currently in orbit attached to the Crew-8 Dragon on the International Space Station. Crew-8 is expected to return later this summer.

During its initial design, the Dragon spacecraft trunk was evaluated for re-entry breakup and was predicted to burn up fully. The information from the debris recovery provides an opportunity for teams to improve debris modeling. NASA and SpaceX will continue exploring additional solutions as we learn from the discovered debris.

Comprised of two sections, a Dragon spacecraft has a pressurized section that safely flies crew or cargo, and an unpressurized expendable section called the trunk. The trunk contains hardware used for spacecraft power and cooling while in orbit. Prior to re-entry, the trunk is jettisoned and breaks up in the Earth's atmosphere, while the Dragon spacecraft renters Earth's orbit — protected by its heatshield — and deploys four parachutes prior to splashing down and completing its mission

In the unlikely event of locating a piece of space debris, please do not attempt to handle or retrieve the debris. Instead, please contact the Space Debris Hotline at 1-866-623-0234 or recovery@spacex.com.

NASA and SpaceX remain committed to safeguarding the public, astronauts, and ground crews.

posted 07-26-2024 06:16 PM               

SpaceX release

Dragon Recovery to Return to the u.s. West Coast

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft is designed to fly both astronauts and cargo to and from Earth's orbit, advancing humanity's ability to live and work in space on the road to making life multiplanetary.

In June 2010, Dragon became the first privately-developed spacecraft in history to launch, orbit Earth, reenter, and be recovered back on Earth. This milestone was followed by Dragon becoming the first commercial vehicle to visit the International Space Station in May 2012 under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program – an incredibly successful public-private partnership that has led to regular commercial cargo resupply missions to the space station through NASA's Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract. In 2020, NASA certified Dragon for human spaceflight after the historic launch of NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the space station.

Dragon's now 45 missions to orbit have helped ensure the continued operation of the space station – delivering critical supplies, scientific research, and astronauts to the orbiting laboratory – while also creating greater opportunities for humanity to explore Earth's orbit.

Dragon Design and Current Recovery Operations

The Dragon spacecraft is comprised of two parts: a pressurized section that safely flies crew and cargo, and an unpressurized expendable section called the trunk, which contains hardware used for spacecraft power and cooling while on-orbit. On cargo missions, the trunk can also deliver or dispose of unpressurized hardware from the International Space Station, depending on mission needs. When Dragon returns to Earth, the trunk is jettisoned prior to the spacecraft safely splashing down.

During Dragon's first 21 missions, the trunk remained attached to the vehicle's pressurized section until after the deorbit burn was completed. Shortly before the spacecraft began reentering the atmosphere, the trunk was jettisoned to ensure it safely splashed down in unpopulated areas in the Pacific Ocean.

After seven years of successful recovery operations on the U.S. West Coast, Dragon recovery operations moved to the East Coast in 2019, enabling teams to unpack and deliver critical cargo to NASA teams in Florida more efficiently and transport crews more quickly to Kennedy Space Center. Additionally, the proximity of the new splashdown locations to SpaceX's Dragon processing facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida allowed SpaceX teams to recover and refurbish Dragon spacecraft at a faster rate to support a rapidly growing Dragon manifest after the completion of NASA's Demo-2 mission in August 2020.

This shift required SpaceX to develop what has become our current Dragon recovery operations, first implemented during the Demo-1 and CRS-21 missions. Today, Dragon's trunk is jettisoned prior to the vehicle's deorbit burn while still in orbit, passively reentering and breaking up in the Earth's atmosphere in the days to months that follow. As the trunk does not have any maneuvering capabilities of its own after separation, the location and precise timing of the trunk's reentry cannot be predicted and is dependent upon solar activity.

When developing Dragon's current reentry operations, SpaceX and NASA engineering teams used industry-standard models to understand the trunk's breakup characteristics. These models predicted that the trunk would fully burn up due to the high temperatures created by air resistance during high-speed reentries into Earth's atmosphere, leaving no debris. The results of these models was a determining factor in our decision to passively deorbit the trunk and enable Dragon splashdowns off the coast of Florida.

In 2022, however, trunk debris from NASA's Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station was discovered in Australia, indicating the industry models were not fully accurate with regards to large, composite structures such as Dragon's trunk. SpaceX and NASA reviewed the data and performed additional materials testing to better understand the trunk's break-up characteristics and improve the respective modeling.

To date, the majority of trunk debris has reentered over unpopulated ocean areas. In the last six months, however, SpaceX became aware of three new cases where trunk debris was found on land; SpaceX is unaware of any structure damage or injuries caused by these debris.

Looking Ahead

SpaceX is committed to safe spaceflight operations and public safety; it is at the core of SpaceX's operations. After drawing new conclusions based on the data, we made two immediate changes while continuing to find a longer-term solution. First, in agreement with NASA, we paused trunk payload disposal during return operations; an empty trunk has a higher probability of fully burning up during reentry than one with payloads. Next, SpaceX implemented material changes to certain components of Dragon's trunk to further improve the probability of it burning up during reentry.

Simultaneously, SpaceX engineering teams explored a wide variety of solutions to fully eliminate the risk of trunk debris landing on populated areas without increasing risk to Dragon crew or the public. Some of the options studied included a complete trunk redesign; a dedicated propulsion and guidance system to allow the trunk to deorbit itself; jettisoning the trunk at different times in the deorbit burn; and more.

After careful review and consideration of all potential solutions – coupled with the new knowledge about the standard industry models and that Dragon trunks do not fully burn-up during reentry – SpaceX teams concluded the most effective path forward is to return to West Coast recovery operations.

To accomplish this, SpaceX will implement a software change that will have Dragon execute its deorbit burn before jettisoning the trunk, similar to our first 21 Dragon recoveries. Moving trunk separation after the deorbit burn places the trunk on a known reentry trajectory, with the trunk safely splashing down uprange of the Dragon spacecraft off the coast of California. SpaceX is working with NASA, the FAA, and other federal agencies to evaluate and assess all potential return locations off the coast of California to ensure safe and reliable Dragon splashdowns on the West Coast.

To support these changes, a Dragon recovery vessel will move to the Pacific, where we will utilize existing SpaceX facilities in the Port of Long Beach to support initial post-flight work and operations on Dragon. Post-splashdown, crew and cargo will transit to California ahead of their final destinations, such as Houston, Texas or Cape Canaveral, Florida. Dragon refurbishment will continue to primarily take place at our Dragon processing facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to prepare the Dragon spacecraft for its next flight.

Continued innovation of spacecraft design and operations is critical to ensure Dragon continues to safely fly to and from Earth's orbit. This new path will help make this possible while also keeping the public safe as we work toward becoming a spacefaring civilization.