Dragon Rendezvous (CRS-16) (Dragon Rendezvous (CRS-16))

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E way.
It is exactly one o'clock a M Pacific time on Saturday, December 8th, and you're looking at a live view of the Space X Dragon spacecraft.
Coasting through space is it prepares to rendezvous with the international space station about 30 minutes from now.
My name is Tom for Dario, and I'm a firmer engineer here.
It's basics.
Joining me on this early morning is NASA public affairs officer Dan Q.
It.
Dan.
Thanks so much for joining us today, Tom.
Thanks so much for having me.
This is my first time hosting a cargo resupply mission from Space six headquarters out here in Hawthorne.
I'm super excited to be here.
Kind of one of the coolest parts of my job.
Supporting the space station is traveling tow locations all across the globe where the action is taking place.
It's a privilege to ad space X headquarters to the list in case you missed it.
Dragon launched aboard a Space X Falcon nine rocket earlier this week.
On Wednesday, December 5th, at 1 16 PM Eastern.
Immediately after Dragon separated from the Falcon nine, it began a series of burns which gradually raised its orbit to align more closely with the international space station Dragon, then receive the all clear to start its careful approach towards that station.
And this approach actually occurs in several phases and will explain why that happens throughout the broadcast today.
The first approach point was when it was just 350 meters away from the international space station.
It's already past that and moved in much closer.
Once that all clear was given.
It moved into 250 meters, which is where it's sitting right now at this very moment.
So it's just 250 meters away from the space station.
That's about 820 feet or you're about the same distance is 2.5 football fields.
Pretty soon it's gonna get given the all clear and it's gonna deport that.
Depart that 250 meter hold point and enter what we call the keep out sphere, which is an imaginary sphere around the space station by the radius of about 200 meters.
And this is just in place to put a big set of rules for any vehicles traveling to or from the international space station.
There's keep out sphere.
There's also something known as the approach A Lips oId, which is much larger.
But again, these air just in place for any time of vehicles traveling to the space station.
There's a bunch of gates and a bunch of checks that it has to go through before it actually gets in, closed for the grapple or the docking of whatever the vehicle is going to be doing.
But there's a series of go no go polls throughout this, that we're gonna be listening.
Thio giving you updates.
His dragon gets closer into that final capture point.
Right now on your screen, you can see a video as it appears from the International Space Station, looking at the Dragon Spacecraft right now.
We just passed into nighttime aboard the station, meaning that the station and the dragon are currently in the earth's shadow.
We can't see too much right now on that camera.
You can see that strobe light blinking that is the dragon right there.
A zit approaches the 200 meter Keep out sphere for this perspective, from the station, it does look like dragon.
It's kind of stationary or motionless, but it's actually traveling in an enormous velocity is it awaits clearance to proceed to the next arrival checkpoint.
Right now, both Dragon and the station are traveling at 17,000 miles per hour, which is insanely fast.
Commercial air aircraft only travels about 550 miles per hour.
Um, and if you were able, if you were able to fly as fast as Dragon, you could cover the distance from New York to L.
A.
And a and 1/2 minutes, and we just heard the word that dragon just got the goto move into that keep out sphere.
So it's gonna depart that 250 meter points been holding there for a couple of minutes.
And again it gets these hold points and the teams here at Hawthorne or just running a series of checks on Dragon making sure the systems are behaving themselves.
And then once everything looks good, they get the green light and then they give dragon that go.
Eso control can actually be, uh, commands can actually be sent from the crew on board the international space station.
They have a control panel where they can command dragon to approach, report any number of different things and they're also going to be in the driver's seat for the actual capture this morning.
You're gonna be hearing a couple of voices today on the space to grounds as they're called.
You just might have heard of Serena on on Chancellor.
She's a NASA astronaut on board.
She's gonna be backing up the prime for today's operations.
That's Alexander Gerst.
He's a European astronaut, needs the current commander on board the International Space Station.
He's actually going to be using the controls inside to reach out and grab the dragon and this ah, view on your screen.
I was actually exactly the same camera in the same screen that they're looking at.
It's almost like a video game control for them.
They have a joystick and some hand controls, and they're gonna use it to control the massive Canadarm two.
It's a 57 foot long arms to reach out and literally just snag Dragon out of the sky.
It is pretty cool how they do that.
They're sitting usually inside the coop alone.
The space station, which kind of looks like the window of a tie fighter.
One of the coolest place to see pictures from the I s s right now, Like Dan said, you are seeing a view from the I s s Just a few minutes ago when the station of the dragon were in broad daylight, we were seeing some unbelievable pictures because the station, because in that orbit you get about approximately a sunrise and a sunset every 45 minutes.
Um, we'll be seeing hopefully come into and light.
Pretty soon we'll get some nice views of that dragon up, but right now you can still see the strobe light.
Ah, as the dragon slowly approaches into that keep out sphere, it looks like we're about 23 minutes away from sunrise.
Eso will be.
I mean, we might have some sunrise on the dragon by then.
It's been moving through the checkpoints very quickly today.
Teams not tracking any issues with the vehicle.
Um, and actually pretty well ahead of schedule.
I think the original capture time was supposed to be around 3 a.m. Pacific time over here on the West Coast, but they are at least right now about 30 minutes ahead.
Eso dragon proceeding smoothly towards the international space station right now, both vehicles flying over the North Pacific Ocean.
They're just about 250 statute miles over the Earth's surface.
Traveling in this orbital nighttime.
It's important to note that, unlike a launch, when the countdown is usually set at a specific time and then all events happen in relation to that launch time in a very fixed schedule, a dragon approaching capture Any approaching capture for a visiting spacecraft is a little bit more fluid than that.
The computer aboard the dragon and the crew on board the station and down here on the Earth are all adjusting to things that happen in real time.
And sometimes the orbital mechanics or the slight variations in thrusts from the Dragon spacecraft or the position of the station can cause things to move a little bit faster, slower.
So it kind of happens as it happens, and the crews on the ground here make that call of whether or not we're good to proceed.
Yeah, yeah, we have pretty much a whole window.
The window will actually open up in just under 30 minutes, and it's about an hour and 1/2 window.
Where the crew has to go basically, is everything's behaving with dragon and everything looks good on the robotic arm to actually reach out and grapple that vehicle once.
It's only about 10 meters away, so right now we're past the 250 meter points, so any second they should be passing through that Keep out sphere again.
That's just an imaginary sphere around the space station.
The next point where Dragon's gonna hold is it 30 meters, So it's gonna be flying in real close.
Now we're going to see you get closer and closer, bigger and bigger, and your cameras screen obviously is that continues to approach, and once he hits 30 meters, it's gonna do the same thing.
We just did it 250 before that, a 350.
It'll kind of park there, make sure all the systems on Dragon are good.
And then, once everything again gets the green light, though, proceed in a little bit closer, and then we'll get to that final hold point, which is just 10 meters for about 30 feet away from the International Space Station to give you a size reference on how big that keep out sphere is that we're now approaching.
It's about the size of the Eiffel Tower as a radius of a sphere all the way around the S s.
You can imagine a giant sphere about the size of the Eiffel Tower.
Uh, I mean, it's pretty big, but in terms of space, in terms of the orbital mechanics, not that far away yet distances and space are incredibly deceiving.
I mean, the International space station dragon.
Right now we're traveling at 17,000 plus miles per hour, and dragon just, you know, within the last couple of hours has closed the gap tremendously to catch up to the international space station.
Distances are very deceiving.
Whenever you you kind of look out the window.
Especially if they're in that Coppola module.
The astronauts can see for hundreds of miles in every direction and around the earth's surface on their flying over it.
So quick, I think they cover Ah, little over 90% of all the inhabited area on the earth.
Uh, it's some point or another during their orbits around the globe, So it's a fantastic outpost for not only looking back down on Earth, but also for looking out at the universe beyond.
It's just 250 miles above us, which is relatively close.
You think about, you know, your average car trip that's 250 miles.
It's It's a road trip, but actually getting 250 miles straight up.
That's a much more difficult task, and that's kind of where the orbital mechanics plays in is to get to the international space station.
It's only 250 miles straight up, but you can't just go straight up there.
Well, you could, but you just fall right back down again.
Because of Earth's gravity.
Getting into orbit is a little bit more complicated than that.
Uh, we usually use something called the Newton's cannonball analogy to kind of explain why things stay up in orbit.
You could imagine a cannon on top of a tall mountain on if you shot a cannonball out of that, an average cannonball speed.
You can imagine that cannonball just kind of falling back down to the earth in an arc.
If you fired it faster, it would go further and further and further.
In fact, if you fired it as fast you could over the horizon, it would kind of curve around the earth and eventually hit.
But if you could fire it exactly 17 or just about 17,000 miles per hour.
It would.
It would go so fast, it would go past the horizon and continually fall all the way around the earth, never actually hitting.
And that's really what being in orbit is.
It's It's just falling so fast that you never actually hit the earth.
And that's what the dragon and the I s s are doing right now.
And that's why anytime you see astronauts on board the international space station, they're enjoying microgravity, and it's literally just because they're falling.
They're constantly in free fall.
You can mimic that same feeling, that same kind of phenomenon here on Earth.
If you do a parabolic flight on an airplane, some people call it the vomit comet.
It's a very famous airplane where you can actually get that microgravity experience.
But thing about the space station that makes a unique that you're getting that for, you know, constantly.
So you're able to do research in an environment completely alien toe.
What we do here on Earth, you're able to do experiments where you can take gravity completely out of the equation.
It also makes moving big things around like spacecraft.
Ah, whole lot easier.
And we've had a constant human presence in that space station for almost 18 years now, which is mind blowing when you think about it.
When I was in high school of this thing, they had barely finished the first expedition and built the trusts.
And now here we are, continual human presence in space, thanks to the international space.
Keep out here.
You have the authority to issue in aboard.
If no, come with M, C, C, H and Light is outside of the portal.
Houston.
And again, the voice you heard just there is NASA astronaut Serena on on Chancellor.
She's the backup or in the back of position for today's Grapple, and she's assisting.
Alexander Gerst is actually gonna be at the controls, so she's handling all the voice communications.
She was just talking to the Capcom over and Mission Control Houston over at the Johnson Space Center, my home base, where it's actually a little bit later in the day for them almost the morning.
Yeah, it's almost the morning for them.
It's still Friday night for us here, out of authority, but you're gonna hear her voice kind of throughout the procedures today and again, the crew kind of in the driver's seat.
For all of these operations this morning, they're gonna be the ones reaching out with that robotic arm and grappling the dragon spacecraft once it's only 10 meters away.
Once that's done, though, they actually hand control back down to the ground, and you can see those ground controllers in your screen right now.
That's again the International Space Station flight control room out in Houston.
Once they grappled the spacecraft, they're done.
They're kind of done for the day.
They hand over control to the ground, who do the much slower process of actually swinging dragon around to birth it or attach it to the International space station.
That usually takes about a couple of hours final following a grapple on.
Then they get it bolted in place, where it stays for the duration until it's time to come home.
And when we talk about birthing, it's ah little bit different than docking, which some other vehicles due to the International space station.
This actually goes back to old shipping days.
You had a harbor with big ships and small ships coming in and out smaller more maneuverable ships that were ableto power themselves all the way into the harbor and then brush right up against the doc that was called docking.
However, larger ships that didn't have the flexibility and agility to move inside of harbor were met by tugboats out in the open ocean and brought into the harbor so that could be safely burst on.
That's what's happening, Tiu the Dragon Spacecraft.
Right now it's being birthed by the tugboat of the station, which is that 57 foot Canadarm boom.
And with birthing and docking, there's some advantages and disadvantages both ways.
Most of the cargo vehicles that currently traveled to the international space season use that birthing method.
One of the big advantages is you get a much larger port to move cargo in and out of.
They get to use that common berthing mechanism, which is actually the exact same mechanism connecting all the modules together.
It's a great big wide hatchway, which is perfect if you're bringing up a great big large bags of cargo or even rack telephone booth size items to the International Space station.
Docking, however, has its own advantages and that the spacecraft is totally in control of its own approach and its attachment to the I S s.
But this does require amore complicated ring mechanism toe actually attached to the I S s.
So the opening isn't as big, but usually a crude vehicles use a docking maneuver so that there doesn't have to be anyone inside the space station to approach or leave.
It's like, look, no hands.
You can see that dragon Ah, solar array right there.
It's currently being illuminated by a light.
And of course you can see the strobe at the very top of that dragon.
Not much else is visible again.
We are in the earth's shadow right now.
Ah, but the dragon is currently using a suite of sensors on board in order to track and make sure that it's recording its distance properly or measuring its distance properly to the I.
S s.
One of those sensors is in a thermal camera that measures the infrared signal from the space station and that space station is actually pretty hot When you, when you compare it towards the backdrop of space, space is ice cold and space station is very hot.
So when you look at it through an infrared camera.
It's just a bright white light, very easy for the flight computer onboard that dragon to track it and lock on.
It's also using something called lidar, which is light detection and ranging.
This is actually a laser that fires little pulses of laser light towards the station, which are then reflected by retro reflectors on the station.
And the Dragon flight computer can measure the time of flight of that laser light back and forth and know exactly how far away it is.
Tom, I'm just proud of proud of you for nail on that Light, our acronym and space station.
It's so hard right now, but dragons just continuing to approach again.
We're inside that keep out sphere the next major milestone.
We're gonna be looking out for words when it's just 30 meters away, so just kind of continue toe follow along.
Every single visiting vehicle takes this kind of phased approach to the space station, where they stop it.
All of these gates again, just for teams to run quick checks on the vehicle and his performance as it's approaching the space station when it comes to bringing two spacecraft together I mean, these great, big, massive, complex machines, slow and steady, always wins the race, whether your birthing or docking a spacecraft, because you requires a great deal of precision just to make sure everything goes according to plan, we're keeping the spacecraft safe.
And most importantly, we're keeping the crew safe sensation on two for block travel.
We're going to let me see the view starting to converge on Monitor one cameras.
Your three.
It's about three port, maybe about half a vehicle with forward and camera nine is Set it up.
Cover that thing nominal.
And so, as you just heard from that little quick exchange from Serena on on Chancellor and the cap calm down in Houston, they haven't overly graphic on the screen that we're getting a couple of camera views of every once in a while, This one right here.
And there's an expected kind of approach of where dragon should line up with some of the square in the circle in the middle of that overlay graphic.
And so the crew members air periodically calling out what they're saying.
They have a camera set up that we're looking at right now.
Some teams on the ground can also monitor in just right alongside him.
But she's making these call outs, and then they're going to check where dragons expected to be down on the ground.
They're able to do that really quickly.
There's somebody named a visiting vehicle officer in Mission Control Houston, who then gets on the flight director loop and lets the flight director know the status of what the crew just relate back and a CZ you just heard, Serena called down.
She gave the the alignment of Dragon right now, and within just a couple of moments of visiting vehicle officer confirmed it was good.
Dragon continues to fly in them even closer.
The crew does have a control panel onboard the space station, where they can send commands to dragon if they need to give it a command to approach or aboard any of any of the above.
During these final phases of dragon flying towards the space station, it's tough to see from this point of view right now, but, uh, dragon does have its solar arrays extended.
Right now, it's obviously in the shadow of the earth, and there's no solar energy being harvested, but via raise together with the batteries on board Dragon, allow it to just kind of hang out in space.
So if there is ah, abort for any reason, we need to hold for any for any, uh, any, any problems or anything, we've seen Telemetry Dragon to just hang out for a little bit.
It's ah, it's sort of a slow and steady wins the race mentality here for these these visiting vehicles.
And we have that again that big capture windows.
So we have about an hour and 1/2 long block where dragon will be if it's at that capture point.
The conditions were right and they can actually reach out and capture Dragon.
That's just the 1st 1 There's another one right on top of it about five minutes after this capture window ends.
So a lot of opportunities to Grapple Dragon this morning.
But everything's going really smoothly so far with the spacecraft are actually pretty ahead on the time line.
Still, it looks like they might get there early.
I think they know that they have some holiday gifts on board, and they're eager to get it there to the International Space Station.
Dragon is currently adjusting its position with its Draco thrusters.
It has 16 of those Draco thrusters total grouped into redundant sets of four.
Those were located all around the side of it.
That dragon, though it launches with the trunk on top of that falcon nine and kind of a Ford pointing orientation, it actually is capable.
With those 16 Draco thrusters of moving in any direction.
The onboard dragon flight computer uses algorithms to figure out exactly which thrusters to fire on.
If we get some sunlight, we might actually see those thrusters firing.
But of course, as we have been saying, Ah, it's a slow and steady operation.
Those maneuvers air very calculated ahead of time.
And there's no rush.
S O Dragon is slowly getting closer and closer to its target, which you can see right in the middle of your screen.
Right here.
That light is getting closer to the cross hairs s so I can get lined up for gravel and we are right about 12 minutes away from sunrise.
So we will be getting some light on Dragon in the not too distant future.
So we should have some pretty good views of it once it's actually time for Grapple again If you're just joining us, Dragon is approaching the next hold point at 30 meters away from the space station.
This will be the second to last one.
It's moved through all of these different gates and we're actually just hearing it's inside 100 meters.
So it's less than 100 meters away from the space station.
That's just about 300 feet.
It's going to continue flying in until it's just 30 meters away.
Then it's gonna pause, will do all the quick checks again and then they'll get to go to move in even closer and again.
The final hole point will come when it's just 10 meters away, and that's when it's actually close enough for the Canadarm to reach out and grab it.
That's all done by controls with the crew on board the International space station.
Specifically, Alex curse the current station commander as the one who's gonna be driving the train today.
It will actually reach out and grapple the dragon on a very specific point, a grapple fixture on the vehicle.
And now, once the arm has that initial contact, a series of snares kind of draw the vehicle in and has a firm hold on the Dragon spacecraft.
Currently, that Dragon is using its Draco thrusters to maintain a strict attitude and position.
But when it gets close enough to be grappled, we enter what's called a free drift state.
That means that we just turn off those algorithms that hold it a very precise attitude on.
Then let that Canadarm grab onto those snares.
The reason we do this is so that the dragon structures don't try and fight the snares, and it could be a smooth capture.
And again, once dragons captured today, control will actually get handed over to the folks on the ground over in Houston to attach Dragon to the space station.
Those kind of flip it around and then oriented to the earth facing side of the space station docks to the bottom of what's known as the Harmony module.
Also known is no to, and then once that's in place up to the crew again, they actually outfit what's known as the vestibules, so kind of the space between the dragon and the station hatches and then they get ready to open.
The hatches are supposed to get open tomorrow morning, but it's not uncommon for the crew to get a little bit ahead of schedule and get the hatch open, especially when a new vehicle gets there.
This Dragon spacecraft delivering £5600 of cargo to the international space station.
That takes the form of everything from some supplies for the crew.
Whether it's, um, knew some fresh food, which these vehicles kind of the only fresh food that they get while they're on board the International space station but also carrying tons of science on board.
These vehicles air literally the lifeline to keep all of that research going on board the international space station and bringing up research everything from teaching us how to live and work in space for long durations of time to research being developed by different commercial companies, academics, other government organizations down here on planet Earth that are looking to benefit those of us still down here and that all flying to the U.
S.
National Laboratory onboard the space station, Dan and I were speculating that the fresh food was the reason that we're a little bit ahead of schedule tonight.
That's exactly why they're flying right in.
They heard There's candied yams and the the other food on board and ready to get that out.
I really like being up in space is a sort of a challenge in preparation for for any any visiting vehicle on any crew aboard the I s s really It's sort of like going camping, but you have to bring literally everything with you.
You may go camping and depend on something as simple as air and water being there when you get there.
But space doesn't really have any of that stuff.
So station really is dependent on all the visiting vehicles to bring up all of the essentials for life on.
This includes air, water and food, but also spare parts visiting vehicles also sometimes important momentum to the international space station to keep it in the correct orbit above the earth.
Yeah, this this vehicle in particular, actually is bringing up some air for the crew.
It's flying to oxygen tanks.
Um, there what's known as Norse tanks?
Nitrogen auction, recharge system, other.
These large tanks that carry up liquefied either oxygen or nitrogen, so super dense liquefied versions of that this one has to oxygen tanks, and that's just to really continually replenish that actual breathing atmosphere onboard the space station.
Ah, lot of the life support systems on station are designed to basically recycle, which you have up there.
So since you have to bring everything with you, it makes life a lot easier.
If you could just keep using it over and over again.
So everything from the heir to the water we recycle a lot of it.
The water is one that always kind of blows people's minds of.
We like to say that the astronauts for them today's coffee was yesterday's coffee because they're actually recycling everything.
All of their urine sweat, just condensation in the air.
All of that gets fed into a recycling system, and we're actually able to reclaim in excess of 90% of all of the water onboard the space station.
And that's really good.
That's mean miles ahead of where we were, even in the in terms of technology beginning of the space station.
But that has to get even better before we go to a place like Mars, where you, you know, everything has to be more reliable, and every pound you bring up is precious.
So the more you can recycle, the much better of a mission structure you'll have.
And that's where the international space station comes in for us, for developing.
All of these technologies were testing them right now for extremely long periods of time, were shaken everything out, making sure it works and building the new stuff so we can start sending people even further than we've ever gone before.
Having a continuous human presence in space is critical for those long duration missions that'll be coming up, especially as we look on to Mars, returning to the moon and even other planets in the solar system.
Other bodies in the solar system that research that the Isis is doing right now is critical toe advancing those technologies.
We're ready for those long voyages.
There's actually a really interesting payload in Dragon's trunk that's coming up on this.
It's called the robotic for fueling Mission three.
This is the third phase of this.
It's been ongoing for a while, and it's a NASA payload that's testing just that.
Refueling, specifically refueling of spacecraft and satellites while they're in space.
The 1st 2 phases went through a lot of different tests with new equipment because they're building totally specialized tools, and one of the cool things that they're trying to do is actually designed it so you can refuel spacecraft and satellites that were never designed to be refueled in the first place.
On the interesting thing with this one that's coming up on Sierra 16 is this will be the first time they're actually gonna be transferring cryogenic fluid, which is essentially what a lot of rocket fuel is to a device onboard the space station.
So that'll be a really exciting milestone for them.
They're also going to be actually storing some of that cryogenic fluid, about 42 leaders of it for six months.
And it's it's tough to keep stuff cryogenic because fuel likes to just kind of boil office.
It is a kind of heats up, so it takes power and energy to keep it cold and to kind of maintain that fuel.
So that's one of the things that will be doing.
But that has big implications for everything from just refueling satellites around our planet to refueling spacecraft around the moon on their way to Mars.
All all of the above.
Refueling here on Earth is pretty simple, because we have the ability to utilize gravity to move those liquids around.
When you fuel up your car, you're just kind of letting the gas be taken down into the tank by gravity and then even more critically.
Once it's in the tank, it's pulled to the bottom, where it's pulled into the engine by gravity.
Don't really have to think about where the few the fluid is in the trunk.
It's all taken care of, for you are in the town.
Excuse me, but in space in zero G environment, that fluid just tends to float around within the tank.
It's really it's a challenging engineering problem to make it such that the fluid gets to a place where it could be used properly by the engines.
A lot of times for rockets will spin the rocket in order to get the fuel all the way around the side.
Or the second stage of the Falcon nine rocket actually uses its cold gas thrusters to accelerate the entire second stage just a little bit, so that all the fluid is forced towards the back of the tank and can then be ingested by the turbo pumps So these are all important engineering problems that need to be solved for in flight refueling on longer missions and just a quick status update.
We're getting closer and closer again.
Our next hold point is going to be a 30 meters.
Right now there are about 68 meters away from the space station.
So just continuing to close, then if you're just now joining us, we're well ahead on the time line today for for the Grapple, they're closing dragons closing in on that 30 meter whole point, which will be its next kind of pause, where it'll campout will run some checks here in Hawthorne.
Just make sure all the systems are still good and then they'll go to move into that final capture point.
Capture point is just 10 meters away from the space station, and then it's over to the crew on board.
And it's gonna be Alex Curse of the European Space Agency astronaut on the current Expedition 57.
Commander is gonna be at the controls today, and he's backed up by Serena on on chancellor.
A NASA astronaut will hear her voice periodically coming over the space to ground loops, talking to the team's down in Houston.
You, for those of you just joining us Dragon has been in the earth's shadow for the majority of our Webcast today.
But, uh, it looks like sunrise is only about a minute and 1/2 away, so hopefully we'll get some nice sunlight views of dragon Ah, as it gets closer and closer to the international space station, we should have some great lighting conditions for that actual grapple.
So it's always cool to see Dragan just kind of flying.
They're real close to the space station, the clouds or the ocean, or wherever we're flying over.
Flying down below is both vehicles are traveling in excess of 17,000 miles an hour.
It it kind of give you a holistic view of everything taking place.
And it's always pretty mind blowing to see two spacecraft that just a couple of days ago one was on the ground.
One was flying, you know, a few 100 miles above all of the sudden there, right next to each other.
It's it's always incredible.
It's always very humbling to see this stuff happened, but it's been slow and steady so far.
It's actually been ahead of schedule so far were originally expecting to grapple around 3 a.m. Pacific time.
But they've been about 30 minutes or so ahead not tracking any issues with the vehicle of the teams and Houston on the left there and Hawthorne on the right, working in tandem for all of these operations this morning is Dragon just gets closer and closer.
We're still waiting for it to arrive at that 30 meter point, which will be our next hold.
That should be there within the next couple of minutes or so on your screen.
Right now you can see.
Oh, you just did see those.
Those to mission control centers.
One inside NASA headquarters and won its basics headquarters.
Ah, and there is a view of the dragon finally coming into the sun.
Uh, this is a view from the end of the Canadarm as it looks towards the dragon.
Just describing what you see that those of the dragon solar rays on the side of the trunk and right in the center of the pressurized capsule is the avionics bay.
It's that dark spot in the middle of the dragon capsule that is actually the inside of the door that opened up to expose those sensors is where the Grapple Point is.
So that camera view will get closer and closer to the dragon, Uh, on that point, but those guys at NASA headquarters are there 24 7 Usually that's supporting all the human activities aboard the space station.
Yeah, at eso at the Johnson Space Center.
In that room you have people 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
And that's been the case in that room for a little over 18 years now, as long as there have been people on board the international space station which the first ones showed up in November of 2000 you've had people on the ground supporting them because the people in that room are the ones who are actually flying the station right now.
I mean, for pretty much every system onboard, there's a counsel in that room controlling it, everything from which way the solar rays are pointed toe What the temperature is inside the vehicle.
They actually control the thermostat.
It the ethos consul who does all the life support.
And so is there in that room flying the international space station, supporting the crew on board and then working with control centers all around the globe.
We have control centers with all of our international partners, Canada and Europe and Russia and in Japan, all supporting their different modules and equipment on board the international space station and then also obviously working in tandem with control centers from our spacecraft providers like Space X.
Like we're doing this morning, the guys and girls of the Space X Command center or not there 24 7 But whenever a Dragon spacecraft using orbit, it is constantly man's, and we always keep track of exactly what the dragon is doing over now.
Getting some great day time now views of the Dragon spacecraft.
It's it's getting closer and closer against slow and steady is the name of the game.
Anytime two spacecraft are coming together in orbit, um, they're gonna be just doing these gradual checks.
And then once it's time to grapple the vehicle that few on the left there is actually a camera right at the end of that robotic arm, and we're going to see that hone in right on that grapple fixture on dragon.
And that's gonna be uh, under the control of the crew members on board.
Specifically European national Alexander Gerst, Who's gonna be controlling the arm today?
We'll be hearing NASA astronaut Serena amount chancellor on the space to ground loops.
She's right next to him, backing him up for all of these operations on the one of the new arrivals onboard the space station.
NASA astronaut and MacLean was also going to be kind of riding sidesaddle today with the crew.
She's just been on board for a couple of days now.
It's our first time ever in space, but she's here to help out with today's operations as well.
But for all of the crew, once Dragon gets attached, it kind of kicks off a series of fast and furious weeks for them to get all of that cargo unloaded and then load all the cargo back in because I mean the big thing with Dragon that it provides right now is a capability to deliver thousands of pounds back down to the ground.
And that's great capability for a lot of the researchers who want to get there experiments back as quickly as possible and then do all the processing down on the ground and is currently the only cargo vehicle in the state suite of vehicles that has that capability.
So once they open up that hatch, it's pretty much no time off for them where they're busting through a whole bunch of different science experiments that are also gonna come back down on the dragon, taking all the cargo off that staying and Lynn loading all the cargo back on That's going home.
Dragon is now approaching that 30 meter hold.
And just about a minute from now, there you will.
We'll start seeing some clouds.
Now is, uh, now moving over the Terminator line, One of my favorite space terms.
That's that line between night and day on the earth's surface and you're going to see the clouds start to come into view.
The station and dragon right now flying over the southern Pacific, about to make a swing just over the very southern tip of South America passing over the mountains of Chile and Argentina.
We're getting a good look at the Dragon spacecraft right now.
That door that seems to be open towards the bottom of the pressurized module is the GNC Bay door.
Our guidance, navigation and control bay door.
That's where all the avionics and sensors of the dragon are able to see out past the heat shield, the heat shielding and just hearing station Houston on face the ground to for Dragon, don't you?
All right, The dragon is at the 30 meter hole.
We're performing our assessments on the ground and we'll let you know shortly when you are Go to proceed with steps.
Four and one decimal wonder we're standing by.
All right, well, there's the call to the crew Dragon now at the 30 meter hold point.
So again, it's just gonna hang here.
They're gonna do their assessments on the vehicle, and then the next thing up will be actually moving into the final hold point.
And that's also known as the capture point.
It'll only be 10 meters away from the space station.
So just about 30 feet, and then it will be within grabbing range of that robotic arm.
The dragon is right now using its suite of sensors to maintain 30 meters from the I s s.
Right now, the primary sensor is the light.
Our sensor light detection and ranging using those laser pulses toe check exactly how far away it is for attitude control, which is how the spacecraft is pointed.
It actually has one of my favorite sensors, one the one that I think is one of the coolest sensors on the spacecraft that's called the Star Tracker does exactly what it sounds like.
It actually is able to detect constellations out in the black guys and make sure that it can see exactly what her step foreign one decimal, 102 and you are go to maneuver to High Harbor.
I'll be going into step for, and we're also go for maneuver to High Harbor so real quick that go to maneuver it a high hover.
That's a reference to a maneuver for the station's Canada arms of that robotic arm.
So they're gonna be just moving through the steps to now get the robotic arm ready as dragons.
Just one stop away from that capture point and it's gonna be crew controlled.
Alex Curse.
The current station commander's gonna be driving in that robotic arm using controls inside the station.
They're kind of like a video game where he's got a joystick and some other hand controls not actually reach out just snag Dragon out of the air station on to buy range.
30 decimal for nine Secondary range.
29 by nine Here's a cup that Canadarm itself is actually a very impressive piece of technology.
57 feet of robotic arm with multiple joints and end apparatuses.
That's, uh, it must be fun to operate you, whether it's in virtual reality or on the station itself.
Yeah, and I mean the thing literally built the space station.
It was one of the first pieces that went up, and it was used.
Every time a new module or the solar arrays are these giant structures that now comprise the station.
It was basically building it piece by piece, block by block.
Now it's it's used for a variety of different operations.
To so not just building the space station that's usedto grabs visiting spacecraft out of the sky.
Some lucky astronauts get to put a foot restraint in it and get flown around during a space walk.
I don't know if you've seen that, but that looks like kind of the greatest riding, the greatest view, you know, on or off the planet.
A very versatile piece of technology.
It's gonna get used with a special attachment.
Know Nas Dexter, the special purpose dextrous manipulator robot to remove those payloads in the trunk of Dragon.
There's two science experiments that came up in that unpressurized section that they're going to get homes outside the space station to do their research ones.
That robotic refueling mission number three.
The other one has a much cooler name.
It's the jet I standing for the Global Ecosystem Dynamics investigation That's gonna be doing some laser ranging observations of the Earth's force.
Specifically looking at kind of how much carbon is stored in vegetation down on the earth.
You can see a beautiful shot from the International space station, including the curvature of the earth.
Looking towards that dragon spacecraft free floating, Not free floating yet, but, uh, holding position in about 30 meters while the Canadarm extends and gets into position.
Yeah, right now they're working.
Thio, finish configuring that robotic arm.
Once it's in the right position, it sounds like we'll be Ah, just about ready to depart this 30 meter point and then just flying into the final hole point, that capture point just 10 meters away.
Yeah, this is this is a great view.
There's a number of cameras on the outside of the international space station, some in HD now nowadays, some NST this again if you're just joining us.
That was a camera on the end of the robotic arm.
It here's a great HD shouted dragon, looking right down at the earth below.
B.
I assist in the dragon are currently flying over the tip of South America.
Looks a little cloudy on there right now, so we can't see any land features, but it might be able to see some as it gets the less cloudy portions of the globe Dragon does carry science and payloads on both the pressurized section of the capsule and the unpressurized.
Trump Look, damn was talking about the reason we do this is because while the station does have air locks in on it, they're not exactly the largest openings in the space station.
So if we have large experiments that are easier to just take up in the vacuum of space, it's easier to use that canadarm two.
Just grab them right out of the unpressurized, section the trunk and mount them on the external surfaces of the space station.
But of course, for pressurized cargo, it's much easier to have it already in an atmosphere that's good for humans.
So the astronauts aboard the space station once they open that hatch well, actually go inside the Dragon Spacecraft and start moving that equipment and supplies into the environment of the isis way.
Talked a little bit about the two payloads in the trunk.
Right now, it's gonna be looking at refueling spacecraft while they're in orbit and also studying the Earth below some of the external payloads that air sitting outside the space station.
Right now, we're just kind of mind blowing and all of the different fields of science that they're looking at.
I mean, you have stuff, obviously, monitoring the earth below the station, a great vantage point to look back to the Earth and study everything from wind speeds, toe climate change and things of that nature.
But we also have payloads, actually, on the space station right now, looking way out beyond you have things like the Alfa magnetic spectrometer, which was delivered on a bun, one of the final shuttle missions looking for the signs of dark matter in the origins of the universe on.
There's another payload that was one of my favorites that Dragon delivered that's actually looking at different stars throughout the galaxy and is actually developing a means to use specific stars are known as pulsars, so stars that emit a giant visible or in different wavelength of radiation.
And they're actually trying to develop a means to use thes pulsars to develop basically an interstellar navigation system.
So, I mean, this is something that's just so forward reaching its unreal.
To think about that like that is up there right now, mapping the cosmos for us to eventually, you know, fly around in.
So it's it's just really cool that that research is taking place right now.
Those pollsters air like the lighthouses of the universe, sort of just constantly emitting their own signature and definitely would be almost science fiction.
Liketo have, ah universal navigation system based on that, Yeah, but for right now, still holding at that 30 meter point again, we are pretty far ahead of the on the timeline today.
We actually weren't supposed to be here for about another 30 minutes or so.
So everything going really smoothly today with the operations with Dragons approach to the space station.
Uh, this is the last hole point before we get to the capture point, and that's when the action kind of kicks up a bit and the crew gets the go to reach out.
Grab Dragon, Get it in that initial grapple again.
This is a view right down the robotic arm.
It's gonna hit the gravel point on the Dragon spacecraft, which will see come, well, interview.
Once that arm gets much closer, it'll get that initial graft, and then a series of snares will kind of pull it tight, and we'll have a firm hold on the Dragon Spacecraft.
And then the crew gets a hand over to the ground to dio much longer task, actually maneuvering it, bolting it to the space station that typically takes a couple of hours.
But they'll get that done entirely from the room down there in Houston, so that's always kind of surreal to think about, too.
You're sitting in a room in Houston, commanding on arm on a spacecraft potentially thousands of miles away from, you know, moving at 17,000 miles per hour, moving a giant spacecraft that it's attached to.
So it's pretty crazy what the's flight controllers are able to do and what we're really able to dio in space today.
All right, You're actually you're seeing some motion.
This is Thea Arm now going into what's known is that high hover position.
So this would be one of the final positions that they have to move the cannon arm to robotic arm to before it's ready and configured for the dragon to begin its final approach.
Dragon in the I s s currently moving out into the open ocean of the southern Atlantic.
Looks like the cloud covers thing out.
Just a little bit like Dan was saying earlier.
Three orbit of the International space station brings it into view of almost 90% I believe, of the habitable area of the planet, which is really exciting.
I can't even imagine what that view is like from the couple.
That actually reminds me you can actually see the International Space station with your naked eye from the ground if you actually go online and head over to spot the station, Um, you can see you can put in your town wherever you are anywhere over the globe, and you can see citing opportunities.
So opportunities where you can look up into the night sky.
It typically eyes best done either in the very early morning hours or in the kind of the late evening hours, and you can see the International space station flying across the sky.
It's brighter than any star in the sky when you could see it, and it moves much faster than an airplane or anything else you used to say.
And believe me when you see it, you know you're looking at by far the largest object in space.
Yes, the largest man made object in space right now, but straight man made up man made object in space, tipping the scales right about a £1,000,000 or so.
And if you put it down on the ground and basically cover a football field from end zone to end zone, I mean, this thing was built piece by piece.
So you have all of these different models.
We just actually celebrated the 20th anniversary of the very first module that was the Zaria module over on the Russian segment I launched back in November of 1998.
Um, and it's been up there every single day since, and we built on piece by piece toe.
Now get this giant space station that we have the interior volume roughly of a 7 47 6 people living and working every single day on board living quarters, experiment hardware, exercise equipment.
Everything's onboard.
And those modules don't just stay up there all, by the way, they orbit the Earth.
But they actually do enter a little bit of drag over the years, molecules that are really high up in the atmosphere, even tho