SpaceX CRS-11, also known as SpX-11, was a Commercial Resupply Service mission to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...

, launched successfully on 3 June 2017. The mission was contracted by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

and was flown by

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...

. The mission utilized a

Falcon 9 Falcon 9 is a partially reusable medium lift launch vehicle that can carry cargo and crew into Earth orbit, produced by American aerospace company SpaceX. The rocket has two stages. The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and payl ...

launch vehicle and was the first reuse of C106, a CRS Dragon cargo vessel that was previously flown on the CRS-4 mission. CRS-11 was the penultimate of the first twelve missions awarded to SpaceX under the

Commercial Resupply Services Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) are a series of flights awarded by NASA for the delivery of cargo and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) on commercially operated spacecraft. The first CRS contracts were signed in 2008 and awarde ...

contract to resupply the International Space Station.

Rocket and spacecraft

KSC-20170603-PH AWG06 0008 (35119281635, cropped)

The CRS-11 mission was the first time that a Dragon spacecraft has been reused, helping SpaceX to scale back its production line and shift focus to

Dragon 2 Dragon 2 is a class of partially reusable spacecraft developed and manufactured by American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, primarily for flights to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX has also launched private missions such as Ins ...

. CRS-11 launched aboard a Falcon 9 launch vehicle on 3 June 2017 at 21:07:38 UTC from

Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968 ...

Launch Complex 39A Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) is the first of Launch Complex 39's three launch pads, located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida. The pad, along with Launch Complex 39B, were first designed for the Saturn V launch vehicle. T ...

(LC-39A). The spacecraft rendezvoused with the station on 5 June 2017 and conducted a series of orbit adjustment burns to match speed, altitude, and orientation with the ISS. After arriving at the capture point at 13:37 UTC, the vehicle was snared at 13:52 UTC by the

Canadarm2 The Mobile Servicing System (MSS), is a robotic system on board the International Space Station (ISS). Launched to the ISS in 2001, it plays a key role in station assembly and maintenance; it moves equipment and supplies around the station, supp ...

, operated by

Peggy Whitson Peggy Annette Whitson (born February 9, 1960) is an American biochemistry researcher, retired NASA astronaut, and former NASA Chief Astronaut. Whitson has a total of 665 days in space, more than any other woman or American. Her first space mi ...

and

Jack Fischer Jack David Fischer (born January 23, 1974) is an American engineer, test pilot and a former NASA astronaut. Fischer was selected in June 2009 as a member of the NASA Astronaut Group 20 and qualified as an astronaut in 2011. He made his first space ...

. It was berthed to the ''

Harmony In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However ...

'' module at 16:07 UTC. The Falcon 9 first stage landed successfully on

Landing Zone 1 Landing Zone 1 and Landing Zone 2, also known as LZ-1 and LZ-2 respectively, are landing facilities on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for recovering components of SpaceX's VTVL reusable launch vehicles. LZ-1 and LZ-2 were built on land lea ...

, making it the fifth successful touch down on land and the 11th overall. The CRS-11 Dragon remained attached to the ISS for just over 27 days. Having been filled with around of cargo, Dragon was unberthed from the station on 2 July 2017 at approximately 18:00 UTC. It was moved to its release position by Canadarm2, but poor sea conditions forced a delay to the following day. On 3 July 2017, at 06:41 UTC, crew members commanded Canadarm2 to release Dragon, and soon after the spacecraft began a series of thruster firings to move it away from the station. About five hours after departing from ISS, Dragon closed its

guidance, navigation, and control Guidance, navigation and control (abbreviated GNC, GN&C, or G&C and within the context of NASA operations, often pronounced 'Gintsee' or (IPA) ʤɪnsiː) is a branch of engineering dealing with the design of systems to control the movement o ...

(GNC) bay door and conducted a 10-minute deorbit burn. Immediately after, the spacecraft jettisoned its cargo trunk and oriented itself for reentry. Dragon splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off

Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...

at 12:12 UTC.

Payload

NASA has contracted for the CRS-11 mission from SpaceX and therefore determines the primary payload, date/time of launch, and

orbital parameters Orbital elements are the parameters required to uniquely identify a specific orbit. In celestial mechanics these elements are considered in two-body systems using a Kepler orbit. There are many different ways to mathematically describe the same ...

for the Dragon

space capsule A space capsule is an often-crewed spacecraft that uses a blunt-body reentry capsule to reenter the Earth's atmosphere without wings. Capsules are distinguished from other satellites primarily by the ability to survive reentry and return a payl ...

. CRS-11 carried a total of of material into orbit. This included of pressurised cargo with packaging bound for the International Space Station, and of unpressurised cargo composed of three external station experiments:

Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer The Neutron Star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER) is a NASA telescope on the International Space Station, designed and dedicated to the study of the extraordinary gravitational, electromagnetic, and nuclear physics environments embodied by ...

(NICER), MUSES and

Roll Out Solar Array The Roll Out Solar Array (ROSA) and its larger version ISS Roll Out Solar Array (iROSA) are lightweight, flexible power sources for spacecraft designed and developed by Redwire. This new type of solar array provides much more energy than trad ...

(ROSA). The following is a breakdown of cargo bound for the ISS: * Science investigations: ** Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) - a NASA- and ORBITEC-developed payload built in

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...

. APH is a fully automated facility that is used to conduct plant bioscience research on the ISS. * Crew supplies: * Vehicle hardware: * Spacewalk equipment: * Computer resources: * External payloads: **

(ROSA): **

(NICER): ** Multiple User System for Earth Sensing (MUSES): A constellation of five

CubeSat A CubeSat is a class of miniaturized satellite based around a form factor consisting of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit, and often use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for their electronics and structure. CubeSats ...

s was also carried on the mission as part of

Birds-1 Birds-1 was the first iteration of a multinational program called the Joint Global Multi-Nations Birds Satellite project, or Birds project, to help countries build their first satellite. The Japanese Kyushu Institute of Technology (KIT) supp ...

, one each from the countries of

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...

, and

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

. The satellites from Bangladesh (''

BRAC ONNESHA ''BRAC Onnesha'' was the first nanosatellite built in Bangladesh to be launched into space. The satellite was designed and built in conjunction with Kyushu Institute of Technology Birds-1 program, which has the goal of helping countries build ...

''), Ghana (''

GhanaSat-1 GhanaSat-1 was the first Ghanaian nanosatellite to be launched into space. It was designed and built in two years in conjunction with the Kyushu Institute of Technology Birds-1 program, which has the goal of helping countries build their first ...

''), and Mongolia (''

Mazaalai The Gobi bear (''Ursus arctos gobiensis''), known in Mongolian as the ''Mazaalai'' (), is a subspecies of the brown bear (''Ursus arctos'') that is found in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol ...

'') were those countries' first satellites in space.

References

External links

*
Dragon website
at SpaceX.com
Commercial Resupply Services
at nasa.gov {{DEFAULTSORT:CRS 011 SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft launched in 2017 Spacecraft which reentered in 2017 SpaceX payloads contracted by NASA Supply vehicles for the International Space Station

Rocket and spacecraft

Payload

See also

References

External links