SpaceX is launching a mission about once every four days, and most of those flights are going to space to deploy Internet satellites for the company's own Starlink broadband network. But this week is different. Aside from two more missions carrying Starlink satellites, SpaceX is preparing to send a four-person crew to the International Space Station early Friday.
The crew launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida will deliver NASA commander Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov to the space station for a half-year stay. This mission, known as Crew-7, will be SpaceX's 11th astronaut flight and the company's seventh operational crew rotation mission for NASA using a Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX's vice president of build and flight reliability, says these crew missions are special. SpaceX and NASA managers met Monday for a flight readiness review, a customary milestone before every crew launch, to deliberate on any problems that could affect the upcoming mission.
“It’s nice to get a chance to step back and look at all the issues, problems, and things that are going right with the vehicles," Gerstenmaier said. "We get a chance to take a look at the Falcon vehicle maybe in a little more in-depth way for crew flights than we do for other flights. We know the importance of flying crew, and the trust that the crew puts in us in delivering."
SpaceX has launched its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets 81 times over the last year (that number could climb to 83 by the end of the week). Since the start of 2023, the company has launched its Falcon rockets 57 times, on pace for roughly 90 missions by the end of the year. For an orbital-class rocket, this is an unmatched launch rate in the entire history of spaceflight.
“We have separate teams that are monitoring all these activities," Gerstenmaier said. "In fact, we can support launches from three pads simultaneously with our support teams the way we are. So we’re not overstressed, we’re not overworking the workforce."
According to BryceTech, SpaceX launched more than 447 metric tons of payload mass in the first half of this year, nearly 10 times more than all Chinese rockets.
"From the outside, it may look like we’re flying a lot of flights and they’re all trouble-free," Gerstenmaier said. "They are not all trouble-free. They are not easy. Every time we fly, we learn something. We spend the time to go analyze it."
Cleared for flight
NASA and SpaceX officials gave the green light Monday to proceed with preparations to launch the Crew-7 mission Friday, but only after formally signing off on several technical issues. One of those involved a drogue parachute that took longer than anticipated to fully inflate on a Dragon crew capsule returning from the space station earlier this year.
That issue was cleared for the launch of the Crew-7 mission during the flight readiness review.
“The parachute system is something that we monitor very carefully," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program. "We have imagery of the chutes every landing, and SpaceX has done a great job of recovering those chutes from every single landing.”
Stich said the other "special topic" discussed Monday was a valve failure on a Dragon cargo capsule in June. During that mission, an isolation valve in the Dragon's propulsion system became stuck. There was no effect on the Dragon resupply mission because the valve in question is only used if there's a problem elsewhere in the propulsion system, when it would close or isolate a leaky thruster to avoid losing propellant.
SpaceX engineers removed the stuck valve from the Dragon cargo capsule after it splashed down at the end of its mission in June. They found signs of corrosion.