Steven Young
Spaceflight NOW
Crew Dragon ferries rst space-station crew
SpaceX is officially in the orbital taxi business after successfully launching four new astronauts on a
six-month mission to the International Space Station. e Crew Dragon spacecraft lifted off from
Cape Canaveral on 16 November (GMT) with NASA’s Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon
Walker, and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Soichi Noguchi aboard. e commercial
capsule automatically docked with the space station 27 hours later. is rst operational mission for
Crew Dragon followed a successful demonstration ight that launched in May. Noguchi became
only the third person to ride into orbit on board three different types of spacecraft, having previously
own on the space shuttle and Soyuz.
Crossed wires doom Vega rocket
Human error has been blamed for the failure of a European Vega rocket and the loss of both a
Spanish Earth-observation satellite and a French spacecraft that was to study strange electrical
discharges during thunderstorms. e Vega’s three solid-fuelled rocket stages operated normally
during the launch from French Guiana on 17 November, but when its liquid-fuelled upper stage
red, the rocket tumbled out of control. e satellites plunged back to Earth. Any debris that
survived re-entry fell harmlessly in a remote area of the Arctic. It was quickly determined that cables
that send steering commands to the upper stage had been installed backwards, causing the loss of
control.
Rocket recovery in the Paci c
Rocket Lab, which launches small spacecraft from New Zealand, successfully recovered the rst stage
of its Electron rocket after it lifted off to place 30 satellites into orbit on 20 November. e rocket
was retrieved from the Paci c Ocean after being slowed by a parachute. In the future, the company
hopes to capture descending rocket stages in mid-air using a helicopter before they splashdown.
Although this rst recovered rocket stage was dunked in sea water, Rocket Lab said it hoped to reuse
some of its components.
Russian space-walkers open a new door
Two Russian cosmonauts stepped outside the International Space Station on 18 November to
prepare for the removal of a module to make room for a long-delayed Russian laboratory module
that is supposed to arrive next year. Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov exited via an airlock
in the station’s Poisk module. It was the rst time the compartment had been used for a spacewalk
since it arrived 11 years ago. e cosmonauts spent more than an hour making sure the airlock was
in working order and that its hatch would close air tight at the end of their excursion. During their
six hours and 48 minutes outside they rerouted a telemetry cable, repositioned a rocket plume
detector and retrieved an experiment that records micrometeoroid impacts.
Crew Dragon lifts off from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral carrying four space station crew members.
The latest space ight news
Cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Ryzhikov wearing their spacesuits inside the Poisk airlock module that they were
preparing to use for the rst time.
ViewSpaceflight NOW
January 2021
Astronomy Now