One down, two to go… the first of three review phases required by the Safety Review Panel (SRP) at NASA have been completed quite successfully by SpaceX for the mission of sending their Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. Over four days at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, SpaceX engineers who are developing the Dragon spacecraft presented their Phase I plan for this voyage to ISS.
Addressed were 23 specific hazards, with special attention paid to the danger of collision. The latter problem happens to one of the most difficult hazards to mitigate, with this topic the primary topic of the safety review. According the panel’s approval letter, the Phase I collision report for Dragon was approved… on the first attempt! As Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, said, “To date, no other group has passed the Hazard of Collision report the first time through or completed the overall review in such a short time. The fact that we passed in under a week speaks well of our team’s capabilities.”
SpaceX will demonstrate its launch, maneuvering and docking abilities by 2009, all part of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) competition. This is a full year before NASA concludes current Space Shuttle ops—El Segundo, California
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