A NASA Flight Planning Integration Panel (FPIP) from 2019 indicates that SpaceX cargo missions will begin to extend their duration to 60 days and beyond starting with CRS-23.[3]
Cargo Dragon
SpaceX plans to reuse the Cargo Dragons up to five times. The Cargo Dragon will launch without SuperDraco abort engines, without seats, cockpit controls and the life support system required to sustain astronauts in space.[4][5] This newer design provides several benefits, including a faster process to recover, refurbish and re-fly versus the earlier Dragon CRS design used for ISS cargo missions.[6]
The new Cargo Dragon capsules under the NASA CRS Phase 2 contract will splash down under parachutes in the Atlantic Ocean, east of Florida, rather than the previous recovery zone in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California.[4][6]
Payload
NASA contracted for the CRS-23 mission from SpaceX and therefore determines the primary payload, date of launch, and orbital parameters for the Cargo Dragon.[7][8]
GITAI S1 Robotic Arm Tech Demo
This mission will also send a GITAI S1 Robotic Arm Tech Demo to the ISS that will carry out operations outside ISS and Intra-Vehicular Activity in the Nanoracks Bishop Airlock module. Nanoracks-GITAI Robotic Arm is the second robot that will be delivered to the ISS this year. The first one was the new European Robotic Arm (ERA) that was launched together with the Russian science module Nauka in July.
Designed by GITAI Japan Inc., the robot will work as a general-purpose helper under the pressurized environment inside the Bishop Airlock. It will operate tools and switches and run scientific experiments. The next step will be to test it outside the ISS in the harsh space environment. The robot will be able to perform tasks both autonomously and via teleoperations. Its arm has eight degrees of freedom and a 1-meter reach.
GITAI S1 is a semi-autonomous/semi-teleoperated robotic arm designed to conduct specified tasks internally & externally on space stations, on-orbit servicing, and lunar base development.
By combining autonomous control via AI and teleoperations via the specially designed GITAI manipulation system H1, GITAI S1 on its own, possesses the capability to conduct generous-purpose tasks (manipulation of switches, tools, soft objects; conducting science experiments and assembly; high-load operations; etc.) that were extremely difficult for industrial robots such as task specific robotic arms to do.
Research
The new experiments arriving at the orbiting laboratory will inspire future scientists and explorers, and provide valuable insight for researchers.
Malta is sending it's very first space bioscience experiment entitled SpaceOMIX as a first mission under the Maleth Program. The first mission will be investigating the skin microbiome of diabetic foot ulcers resistant to conventional treatment. Experiments will include a full multi-omic analysis before and after spaceflight takes place. The experiment is also taking a large number of STEM-based science messages from people including school children of all ages to be part of this historic first mission to the International Space Station. The specially designed biocube based on the ICECubes platform is done in collaboration with Space Applications Services based in Belgium.[14]
Orbit Your Thesis!: OSCAR-QUBE
Designed, built and tested in a period of 14 months by a team of university students from Hasselt University in Belgium, OSCAR-QUBE will be installed in the Columbus Laboratory's ICECubes facility owned and operated by Space Applications Services. The team took part in ESA's Education programme called Orbit Your Thesis! (OYT) and proposed the experiment which is a diamond quantum-based magnetometer with femto Tesla precision. The team are the first to launch their experiment as part of the OYT programme and are the first students from their university to launch an experiment to the ISS. [15]
^From an orbital dynamics perspective, the forward port is easier to approach, and therefore new vehicles and even cargo dragons try use this approach for their first live docking, if for both reasons that, they are not carrying any ISS hardware that involves use of Canadarm 2 for installation and the crew dragon has relocated once to zenith port. The Boeing Starliner was scheduled to make its first docking on OFT-2 at the middle of August 2021 and will leave less less time for 2nd relocation and which is an end to the crew's mission if they fail to redock this time. Along with this crew 3 will prefer to dock at forward port which will require a more risky third relocation; therefore, for all these reasons, Crs-23 will dock at forward port instead of zenith port.[2]
References
^ ab"Launch Schedule". Spaceflight Now. 5 August 2021. Retrieved 6 August 2021.
^"ISS Research Program". Glenn Research Center. NASA. 1 January 2020. Retrieved 27 September 2020. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
