SpaceX's Crew Dragon Homecoming Friday May Be Toughest Part of Its Mission

[Judi Lynn]

By Mike Wall 4 hours ago Spaceflight

Splashdown is Friday at 8:45 a.m. EST.

SpaceX's new astronaut taxi will return to Earth tomorrow morning (March 8), but a safe return is no slam dunk.

Indeed, the fast and fiery descent through our planet's atmosphere may be the most difficult part of Demo-1, the Crew Dragon capsule's maiden mission to the International Space Station (ISS), according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk.

"I see hypersonic re-entry as probably my greatest concern," Musk said on Saturday morning (March 2) a few hours after Crew Dragon launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, kicking off the uncrewed Demo-1 shakeout flight.

He mentioned Crew Dragon’s parachute system and backshell. Both are relatively unproven; they're quite different from the versions employed by the cargo variant of Dragon, which has flown 16 robotic resupply runs to the ISS for NASA.

More:
https://www.space.com/spacex-crew-dragon-earth-return-challenging.html?utm_source=notification

[gateley]

1. I'd love to see this -- hope I can drag my butt out of bed on my day off. Thx! nt