Spaceflight Insider by Lloyd Campbell 8/4/2017
— SpaceX is set to send its next supply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) as early as Aug. 13, 2017. That mission, CRS-12, will mark the end of an era as it will be the last new first-generation Dragon spacecraft to fly.
The CRS-12 mission will bring supplies and science experiments to the Expedition 52 crew currently on board the ISS before bringing cargo and science back to Earth in September. Dragon spacecraft have visited the orbiting outpost 11 times since 2012, carrying well over 40,000 pounds (18,000 kilograms) of cargo and crew supplies to date to the orbiting lab.
The only blemish on the capsule’s record occurred during the CRS-7 flight, which launched on June 28, 2015. After a successful liftoff, and an almost complete Falcon 9 first stage burn, a strut attached to a high-pressure hydrogen bottle in the second stage failed. That failure led to the second stage oxygen tank to over-pressurize, causing it to burst and the entire booster to fail (explode). The Dragon capsule survived the breakup but was destroyed when it impacted with the Atlantic Ocean several minutes later. The payload on this mission has been estimated at costing some $118 million.
All subsequent SpaceX resupply missions since CRS-7 have been completed successfully.
For the CRS-11 mission, SpaceX utilized a thoroughly inspected and refurbished pressure vessel that had previously flown on the CRS-4 mission in 2014. CRS-11 marked the second time that particular vehicle had made a successful delivery of cargo to the ISS and then carried experiments back to Earth. This was the first flight of a previously flown spacecraft since the Space Shuttle’s last mission, STS-135, in July of 2011.
The NewSpace company currently plans to only use previously flown first-generation Dragon spacecraft for future cargo missions to the Space Station. Since SpaceX will no longer be manufacturing complete Dragon 1 spacecraft, resources will be freed up to allow the company to focus more of its efforts on completing the development of the Dragon 2 spacecraft, which will provide crew transportation services to the ISS and for possible other missions.
More:
http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/organizations/space-exploration-technologies/spacex-launching-last-new-first-generation-dragon-cargo-ship/
