BothSpaceX ( News - Alert )and Orbital Sciences Corporation have indicated their commercial cargo supply demonstration flights to the International Space Station (ISS) will be delayed. SpaceX faces delays in having available and trained astronauts onboard the space station capable of bringing in its Dragon capsule for berthing while Orbital has encountered certification delay for its pad work at Wallops Island, Virginia.
Speaking at the National Press Club on September 29, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said its demonstration flight culminating in an ISS berthing was more likely to place in January 2012. A later press statement from SpaceX on September 30 said the company had submitted a range of dates the company would be ready to launch, starting on December 19, 2011, but, “We recognize that a target launch date cannot be set until NASA gives us the green light and the partnership of the International Space Station make a decision on when to continue Soyuz flights. Our flight is one of many that have to be carefully coordinated, so the ultimate schedule of launches to the ISS is still under consideration.”
The primary holdup for SpaceX at this time appears to be the lack of a full six man crew on board the space station, due to the failure of the Progress 44 cargo resupply mission's Soyuz rocket . Since the rocket is also used to launch crews to ISS, flight operations have been delayed until a fix to the Soyuz is verified.
A new three man crew to ISS is scheduled to be sent up in mid-November, but the three currently onboard will have to depart the space station by November 22 in order to beat darkness and poor weather conditions at the Kazakhstan recovery site. Assuming the mid-November launch successfully docks with ISS, the station will have a three man crew until the next three astronauts are sent up around December 28.
Given that a three man crew is likely to have its hands full with normal space station maintenance, NASA and the Russian Space Agency are likely to wait until January when more manpower is available and comfortably settled in onboard.
Orbital told Spaceflight Now it expect the first flight of its Taurus II rocket from Wallops Island to slip into the beginning of 2012, based on slowed progress in certifying and cleaning up the newly built Taurus II launch pad. Taurus II needs a successful test flight before Orbital can do its Cygnus cargo freighter demonstration flight.
Taurus II was scheduled to make a demonstration flight in the last quarter of the year, followed by the Cygnus/Taurus II demo flight and berthing with ISS at the end of the 2011, but a June test stand fire during qualification firing of one of the forty year old Aerojet AJ-26 engines resulted in an investigation and additional inspections of the surplus Russian NK-33 hardware.
Doug Mohney is a contributing editor for TMCnet and a 20-year veteran of the ICT space. To read more of his articles, please visit columnist page .
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