SpaceX CRS-12, also known as SpX-12, was a

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 ...

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 on 14 August 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 ...

using a new

Dragon A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...

capsule. The Falcon 9 rocket's reusable first stage performed a controlled landing 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 ...

(LZ1) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. After delivering more than of cargo, the Dragon spacecraft returned to Earth on 17 September 2017.

Mission overview

CRS-12 is the last of the original order of twelve missions awarded to SpaceX under the CRS contract. Originally scheduled for December 2016, the flight was delayed multiple times to August 2017. Launch occurred on 14 August 2017 at 16:31:37 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. Ty ...

aboard a SpaceX

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 ...

rocket. After Dragon rendezvoused with the ISS on 16 August 2017, the station's

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 ...

grappled the spacecraft at 10:52 UTC. It was then 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 13:07 UTC. Having been at the ISS for a month, the CRS-12 Dragon capsule was unberthed in the late hours of 16 September 2017 and was released by the Canadarm2 on 17 September at 08:40 UTC. After performing separation burns to take it out of the vicinity of the ISS, the Dragon performed a deorbit burn to enable atmospheric reentry. The spacecraft successfully landed in the Pacific Ocean at 14:14 UTC, returning approximately of experiments and equipment to Earth.

Payload

NASA has contracted for the CRS-12 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-12 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 the

CREAM Cream is a dairy product composed of the higher-fat layer skimmed from the top of milk before homogenization. In un-homogenized milk, the fat, which is less dense, eventually rises to the top. In the industrial production of cream, this process ...

instrument, to be mounted externally to the ISS. The following is a breakdown of cargo bound for the ISS: * Science investigations: * Crew supplies: * Vehicle hardware: * Spacewalk equipment: * Computer resources: * External payloads: ** Cosmic-Ray Energetics and Mass (CREAM):

References

External links

*
Dragon website
at SpaceX.com
Commercial Resupply Services
at NASA.gov {{DEFAULTSORT:CRS 012 SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft launched in 2017 Spacecraft which reentered in 2017 SpaceX payloads contracted by NASA Supply vehicles for the International Space Station

Mission overview

Payload

See also

References

External links