SpaceX Crew-9: The Complete Mission in Real-Time 3D
September 29, 2024
Experience the SpaceX Crew-9 mission of September 29, 2024: follow the Dragon capsule's real trajectory to the ISS and, months later, back to Earth and down to the water, in a real-time 3D reconstruction.
It's September 28, 2024.
You will follow one capsule, Freedom, from this launch pad to its return at sea.
Cape Canaveral, Florida. Freedom waits atop this Falcon 9, for its fourth flight.
The first crew to launch from this pad: SpaceX built it an access tower.
In command, American Nick Hague, 49, of NASA.
Beside him, Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, 34, on his first flight.
Freedom has four seats. The two empty ones will bring home two astronauts already up there.
Liftoff! The Falcon 9's nine engines lift more than 500 tonnes.
Heading northeast, along the American coast: the direction of the station's orbit.
If the rocket failed, Freedom would tear itself free, with eight SuperDraco engines.
Max-Q: the air is pushing back on the rocket harder than ever. The engines throttle back a little.
The first stage has nearly emptied its tanks of kerosene and liquid oxygen.
The first stage shuts down and falls away. The second, a single engine, takes over.
It speeds Freedom up to 28,000 km/h, the speed that will keep it in orbit.
Engine off: Freedom is in orbit, about 200 kilometres up.
Separation: Freedom flies alone.
Its nose cone opens, uncovering the docking system it shielded during the climb.
This ring is how Freedom will latch onto the station, tomorrow.
Time speeds up: each second on screen is eight minutes of flight.
Lower than the station, Freedom circles faster: it catches up in 28 hours.
One lap of Earth every 90 minutes: sixteen sunrises a day.
In June, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams flew up to the station aboard Boeing's Starliner.
It was that spacecraft's first crewed flight. Their mission was meant to last one week.
But nearing the station, Starliner suffered helium leaks and failed thrusters.
NASA judged it too risky to bring them home in it: it came back empty, in early September.
Freedom's two empty seats are theirs.
To make room for them, Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson gave up their places on Crew-9.
Nick Hague knows about the unexpected: in 2018, his Soyuz rocket failed mid-climb.
His capsule broke away and brought him back safely. Five months later, he flew again.
Aleksandr Gorbunov was an engineer at Energia, working on Russia's Progress cargo ships.
At the station, Crew-8 is waiting: four astronauts who arrived in March and will head home in October.
Because each crew goes up and comes back down in its own capsule.
It stays docked the whole time: it is the crew's lifeboat in an emergency.
Who pays? NASA buys this flight from SpaceX at a fixed price. Freedom belongs to SpaceX.
The contract: 4.9 billion dollars for fourteen crew rotations.
In 2019, a NASA audit put the price of one seat at 55 million dollars.
Same rule for Boeing: Starliner's troubles have cost it about 2 billion.
Gorbunov's seat costs nothing: in exchange, an American flies on Soyuz.
The final hour. Freedom comes in from behind and below, some twenty kilometres away.
The small white jets are the Draco thrusters: sixteen of them, 400 newtons each, around the capsule.
Each jet pushes Freedom the opposite way to its blast. These ones speed it up.
Now the forward-facing jets slow Freedom down, so it does not overshoot the station.
Both are flying at 28,000 km/h: it is the gap between them that slowly shrinks.
The Sun rises over the station, until now in Earth's shadow.
Freedom enters the approach zone, a bubble 4 km long around the station.
The onboard computer is flying. Hague and Gorbunov watch, ready to call it all off.
Houston gives the go: Freedom enters the 200-metre safety sphere.
Freedom passes beneath the station, under its modules and solar panels.
It overtakes the station from below to settle in front of it.
The lower jets lift it up in front of the station; the upper ones slow the climb.
Freedom turns around on the spot, to present its open nose to the port.
To rotate without drifting, two opposing jets fire together, one on each side.
Final approach. The angled jets push Freedom toward the port, in a straight line.
Then they fall silent: Freedom glides on its momentum.
The forward jets brake. Freedom arrives at a few centimetres per second.
It must meet the port dead on axis: the computer corrects to the centimetre.
Contact! Freedom latches onto the station's forward port.
Twelve hooks close: capsule and station are now one.
Another hour and a half of checks before the hatch can open.
Hague and Gorbunov join nine people, including Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.
Today, Freedom relocates. Harmony has two ports for Dragons: forward and on top.
The top one was freed in late October, when Crew-8 left in its capsule.
The forward one will go to a cargo Dragon, due in two days.
Undocking. The forward jets fire toward the station and push Freedom backward.
Aboard, suited up, Freedom's four travellers: Hague, Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams.
Other jets stop the backward drift. Freedom holds still 60 metres from the station.
Fly-around: a quarter turn around the station, from the forward port to the top port.
The side jets slide it along the arc, while others rotate it.
Its nose stays pointed at the station the whole way. It is all automatic.
If Freedom could not redock, it would take them straight back to Earth.
It is the fifth time a Dragon has relocated with its crew aboard.
Freedom is lined up above the port. The crew gives the go to descend.
The angled jets push it toward the port, then fall silent: it descends on its momentum.
Suni Williams, for her part, has commanded the station since September.
It is from this port that Freedom will leave for Earth, in March.
The forward jets brake one last time before contact.
Redocked, 43 minutes after leaving. The forward port is free for the cargo ship.
Crew-9 heads back to Earth, in the capsule that brought it up: Freedom.
Their replacements, Crew-10, arrived two days ago in their own capsule, Endurance.
This time, all four of Freedom's seats are taken.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are finally going home, after more than nine months instead of one week.
Undocking. A push from the forward jets lifts Freedom above the station.
A second push, on the side jets: Freedom passes in front of and below the station.
It leaves the 200-metre safety sphere around the station.
Behind it, Crew-10 takes over for six months.
Sunset: Freedom slips away into the night.
Up there, Suni Williams broke the women's record for spacewalk time: 62 hours.
The trip home takes nearly seventeen hours. Sped up: one lap of Earth in three seconds.
Burns adjust the orbit to pass over the landing zone at the right moment.
Destination: the sea, off Tallahassee, Florida.
Since June, Wilmore and Williams have circled Earth more than 4,500 times.
Hague and Gorbunov will have had a normal stay: nearly six months.
NASA astronauts are civil servants, paid about 150,000 dollars a year.
Nick Hague, a Space Force colonel, is still paid by the military.
A thirteen-minute burn: Freedom burns off surplus propellant before heading home.
Freedom crosses back into night, over the Indian Ocean.
In space, no hazard pay and no overtime: the salary stays the same.
The only extra: 5 dollars a day in expenses, like any civil servant on travel.
For their nine months, Wilmore and Williams each got 1,430 dollars.
Bound for Earth: atmospheric entry is three quarters of an hour away.
Freedom pivots, nose up, to jettison its trunk in Earth's shadow.
The trunk separates: this cylinder carries Freedom's solar panels and radiators.
It does not come home: it will burn up in the atmosphere.
Sunrise. Freedom turns to brake.
Deorbit burn: seven and a half minutes of braking on the Draco thrusters.
Freedom sheds only 190 km/h. That is enough: its orbit now dips into the atmosphere.
The nose cone closes over the docking system, to shield it from the heat.
Twenty minutes of falling, a quarter of the way around Earth, before hitting the air.
Freedom flips around: the heat shield moves to the front.
Atmospheric entry, at 27,000 km/h, over the Pacific.
The air compressed in front of the shield becomes plasma at nearly 2,000 °C.
The plasma cuts off the radio for a few minutes.
Signal regained. The hottest part is over.
Drogue parachutes, at 5,500 metres up and 560 km/h.
They steady the capsule and slow it before the big parachutes.
The four main parachutes open, at 1,800 metres.
Half-inflated at first to soften the jolt, then fully: 35 metres across each.
Three more minutes under the parachutes, down to the sea.
The shield, still hot, will hit the water first.
Splashdown, off Tallahassee, Florida.
Crew-9 is home. And with it, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who left in June for one week.
171 days in space for Hague and Gorbunov, 286 for Wilmore and Williams.
Freedom did what it had left half empty for: up with two, back down with four.