A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Dragon spacecraft launches on the Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station.
Photo credit: NASA/John Kraus
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Dragon spacecraft launches on the Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station.
Photo credit: NASA/John Kraus
“By cutting it out, we physically went in and actually cut the valve out of the line,” Gerstenmaier said. “It was welded in place, and then we actually welded a new valve back in place.”
Engineers tested the faulty valve to diagnose the cause of the leak, but NASA officials were satisfied with the solution. No leaks were detected during final preparations for Thursday’s launch, and Dragon’s propulsion system appeared to be working well after arriving in orbit.
“We looked at the plans, all the resulting data, the welds, the leak, everything looks great,” said Dana Weigel, NASA’s program manager for the International Space Station. [We’re] I am very happy with the way the repair was carried out.”
SpaceX’s decision to turn off the valve in place rather than maintain an extended standstill period ensured that the Crew-13 mission remained on track and arrived at the space station in time to replace Crew-12, which will return to Earth in mid-October after eight months in orbit.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft was located at SpaceX’s refueling and hazardous materials processing facility, known as Area 59, at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, rather than the company’s usual maintenance hangar a few miles away.
“I actually went down and looked at the vehicle itself, went into the clean room and looked at where they actually had to cut out the valve,” Gerstenmaier said. “There wasn’t a lot of space, but there was good access at the top of the platform. I think what was unique about it was the location where it was done.”
“We also did it with oxidizer on board the vehicle and the oxidizer tank was full, so we made sure everything was clear,” Gerstenmaier said. “We had to get special permission [Space Force’s Eastern] Range to carry out these activities to carry out “hot work” with NTO, with nitrogen tetroxide on the vehicle.”
