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The resilience of SpaceX ‘Crew Dragon hovers on April 4 in the Pacific Ocean after ending the mission of Fram2 astronauts. | Credit: SpaceX
The west coast is the best coast for dragon landings, at least in SpaceX’s books.
The company’s four-member Fram2 mission successfully ended on Friday (April 4) with the splashdown of the crew Dragon Capsule “Resilience” off the coast of South California.
That was a premiere for SpaceX, geographically: all 16 earlier astronaut missions had hit the water in front of Florida, either in the Atlantic or in the Gulf of Mexico.
The resilience is towed on April 4 after the splashdown on board a recovery ship. | Credit: SpaceX
In fact, every returning kite capsule had been injected near Florida near Florida since the beginning of 2021. But last July SpaceX announced that it wanted to shift the restoration operations to the west coast.
Related: SpaceX ‘Private Fram2 astronauts injects down on Earth and end the historic Polar -Bort expedition
The decision was suggested by the fact that debris from Dragons of unnecessary trunk department had been found several times in Terra company, although the modeling work had pointed out that the trunk was completely burned into the atmosphere of the earth during the re -entry.
Shifting splashdowns to the west coast – together with the trunk after burning dragons to control the tractor of the suitcase – will ensure that no debris or property can harm people or property. Anyone who survives re -entry will fall into the Pacific.
This new strategy was applied to FRAM2 and will be repeated in the future for every dragon mission, said SpaceX representative.
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Well, calling the strategy as “new” is not exactly right. The Pacific was the original goal for Dragon Splashdowns and remained exclusive for almost a decade after the first kite flight in 2010.
“The kite recovery operations were drawn to the east coast in 2019, so that the teams unpack the NASA teams in Florida more efficiently and deliver critical freight and transport the crews to Kennedy Space Center faster,” wrote SpaceX in an update last July.
