SpaceX's latest launch to the International Space Station (ISS) was another "first flight" mission, making the company the only American company capable of meeting NASA's needs for delivering cargo and crew to the ISS. The most recent launch was Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft, which delivered a cargo of scientific and medical instruments to the International Space Station.
Northrop plans to use its upgraded Antares rocket on future flights, but because the Falcon 9 is the United States' main rocket for medium-sized payloads, all Cygnus missions planned for 2024 have been booked to SpaceX.
While NASA's cargo missions to the International Space Station don't typically attract media or public interest, they represent cutting-edge technology in many fields. On today's Northrop Grumman and SpaceX NG-20 mission, a NASA-backed contract sent a surgical robot and a chip-making machine into space.
As part of its vast low-Earth orbit (LEO) economic program, NASA has signed contracts with a large number of private companies, including two companies participating in the NG-20 mission, which also marked the success of Falcon 9 as the only US rocket capable of carrying out missions to the International Space Station.
Prior to today's launch, NASA's CRS mission for Northrop relied primarily on United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Atlas rocket and Northrop's Antares rocket. Northrop and SpaceX are old rivals for NASA contracts, and the Antares rocket was developed specifically to meet the launch needs of the Cygnus CRS mission.
However, when NASA's commercial resupply services contract was awarded, there was no restriction on U.S. companies purchasing Russian engines for their rockets. The contract was awarded before a political crisis in 2014, which ultimately meant that companies using Russian engines, such as Northrop Grumman and ULA, had to develop new rockets that eliminated the technological missing pieces. These systems are just beginning to fly, with ULA's Vulcan rocket sending NASA's first lander mission since the Apollo program to the moon in January.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is now the only company capable of flying NASA crew and cargo to the International Space Station. Falcon 9's NG-20 launch marks SpaceX's tenth launch mission this year. It is also one of SpaceX's efforts to achieve 100 launches by 2024 and become the only company in human history to achieve this goal. Today's launch took off around noon from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The launch process also included the spectacular sight of the Falcon 9 engine re-igniting during landing. With plans to use a single Falcon 9 booster multiple times, SpaceX is able to squeeze as much performance out of the rocket as possible. During recent launches to the International Space Station, this allowed the Falcon 9 to land more frequently than previous rocket launches.
SpaceX will also have to upgrade Falcon 9's second stage to accommodate Cygnus. The development of a rocket often depends on the payload it flies, and for the Falcon 9, SpaceX had to modify its second-stage fairing so that SpaceX could load special cargo on the launch pad.
SpaceX’s Jessie Anderson described the changes:
To support the Cygnus mission, SpaceX designed a custom fairing and a mobile transfer vehicle with a mobile clean room to support post-loading operations while the rocket is positioned horizontally on the launch pad. Late loading refers to the loading of cargo in the final hours before launch, after the spacecraft has been encapsulated within the fairing. The fairing retrofit includes a new approximately five-foot by four-foot fairing door that provides direct access to the mobile cleanroom.
Some of the payloads flown to the International Space Station include a surgical robot and a chip-making machine, designed to assess whether space is suitable for these complex processes. As NASA prepares to establish a presence on the moon, medical operations are an important part of its plans. Likewise, semiconductor manufacturing is one of the most difficult tasks on earth because the purity of the product is critical to its performance. Space, on the other hand, offers researchers the opportunity to see if limiting factors such as convection and deposition can be avoided during the manufacturing process.