The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) last week said the two astronauts - Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore - who have been stuck at the International Space Station (ISS) would return to the Earth in February 2025 on a SpaceX Crew Dragon flight.
Williams and Wilmore travelled to the ISS on Boeing's Starliner in June and were supposed to return in a week. However, due to technical glitches, the spacecraft could not leave for its journey back to Earth. Starliner is now scheduled to return "uncrewed" to avoid unnecessary risks to the astronauts, according to NASA.
Currently, NASA and SpaceX are working on several items before the launch of Crew Dragon. For instance, they are reconfiguring seats and adjusting the manifest to carry additional cargo. Here is a look at Crew Dragon and its features.
What is Crew Dragon?
Crew Dragon is one of the two variants of SpaceX's Dragon 2 spacecraft, which is partially reusable.
The other variant is Cargo Dragon. As their names suggest, Crew Dragon primarily ferries astronauts to the ISS and Cargo Dragon supplies cargo to the space station.
SpaceX developed Crew Dragon as part of NASA's plan to hand over space station flights to American companies after the space agency retired its space shuttle in 2011. Crew Dragon's first mission to the ISS took place in 2020 when it transported four American and Japanese astronauts to the destination. So far, the spacecraft has done eight crew rotation missions to the space station for NASA.
What are the features of Crew Dragon?
Crew Dragon consists of two parts: a reusable space capsule and an expandable trunk module.
The capsule is "equipped with 16 Draco thrusters that manoeuvre the vehicle in orbit. Each Draco is capable of producing 90 pounds of force in the vacuum of space," according to a report by the BBC.
The report said the trunk features solar panels, heat-removal radiators, space for cargo, and fins to provide stability during emergency aborts.
The spacecraft is launched into space atop a Falcon 9 - a reusable, two-stage rocket developed by Spacex - and docks automatically to the ISS.
Jessica Jensen, director of Starship mission hardware and operation at SpaceX, told the BBC: "We have GPS sensors on Dragon, but also cameras and imaging sensors such as Lidar (laser ranging) on the nose cone as it's approaching the space station... All these sensors are feeding data back to our flight computer to say: 'Hey, how far away am I from the space station? What's my relative velocity to the space station?'
When the astronauts need to return to the Earth, the spacecraft undocks from the ISS. Then, its trunk gets detached from the capsule and burns up in the atmosphere. The capsule subsequently performs a de-orbit burn - when thrusters are used to reduce the velocity of the spacecraft, allowing it to reenter the Earth's atmosphere.
After reentry, the capsule deploys four parachutes to slow its descent. Ultimately, the spacecraft splashes down into the ocean, where it is recovered by a ship.
