Screenshot of Axiom-2 seen here just avoiding an anvil cloud closing in on Launch Complex 39A
Mission Rundown: SpaceX Falcon 9 - Axiom-2 - Ax-2
Written: May 22, 2023
All dressed in white
For the ninth time, SpaceX will launch astronauts to the International Space Station ISS in the Crew Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket for Axiom.
B1080-1 will lift off on Sunday May 21, 2023 at 17:37 EDT or 21:37 UTC from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA.
NGA on Axiom-2 flight path. Red dot is LC-39A. Brown dot is RTLS Landing Zone 1 on CCSFS
SpaceX’ crewed flights have ranged from commercial astronauts to private citizens. As of Axiom-2, SpaceX will have launched ten missions with humans onboard.
These include the six commercial crew program missions, Demonstration Mission-2, Inspiration 4, and Axiom 1 and 2 which visited the ISS. The total number of humans launched by SpaceX, upon successful completion of Axiom-2, wil total 38 individuals.
After its trip to the station, Freedom will approach ISS directly on Monday May 22, 2023 from 09:12 EDT - 13:12 UTC intending a soft docking with the Harmony module zenit port IDA-3/PMA-3. Expected hard capture docking performed at 13:23:00 UTC.
Axiom-2 is the second private crew mission to the ISS to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The four astronauts will stay on ISS for about 8 days.
After the arrival of Axiom-2, the Crew-6 astronauts currently aboard the ISS: Stephen Bowen, Warren “Woody” Hoburg, Andrey Fedyaev and Sultan Al Neyadi, will receive their four guests for 8 days before they depart from ISS and return to Earth.
Axiom-2 will join the leaking ‘MS-22’ crew now transferred to MS-23 cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin, and NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio, bringing the total crew members aboard to the station to 11 prior to departure of Axiom-2.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft being used on this mission is Crew Dragon C212-2. This is the second flight of Freedom, and it will also be the fifth time since DM-2 in May 2020 that SpaceX uses a new Falcon 9 rocket on a crewed mission.
Per current SpaceX plans, no more Crew Dragon will be built though Cargo Dragons will continue to be built. Endurance C210, Endeavour C206, Freedom C212, and Resilience C207 will be refurbished and reflown in turn as part of the Crew Dragon fleet.
Like the Space Shuttle before it, Crew Dragon 2 is reusable – the first reusable human capsule launch and reentry system in the world. Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were all built to be used one time and are now museum pieces hanging on display.
Since its maiden flight, Dragon 2 has flown 20 times; ten crewed and ten uncrewed.
The booster supporting the Axiom-2 mission is B1080. As this is the booster’s first time to fly a mission, B1080 has been given the designation B1080-1.
After the final static fire test at 21:37:00 EDT on May 19, 2023 on Pad 39A and after the final check outs, the Falcon 9 rocket will be made ready for launch.
After liftoff, Falcon 9’s first stage will propel the astronauts for 2 minutes and 30 seconds to an altitude of around 75 km (~47 miles). After stage separation, Falcon 9’s second stage takes over for the second part of the flight.
Following the stage separation from 2nd stage and Freedom, the booster B1080-1 will turn itself 180 degrees and conduct a 45-55 second long boost back burn reaiming the booster back toward land, followed four minutes later by a single engine 11 second atmosphere re-entry burn and a final three engine 18 second landing burn where the booster will touch down on LZ-1 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Approximately 6 minutes and 21 seconds after second stage engine ignition, the second stage engine will shut down (SECO-1) and the Axiom astronauts will be in orbit.
Freedom is inserted into an initial 190 x 210 km parking orbit, after which a series of phasing and rendezvous burns will take place to bring the spacecraft Freedom to the ISS for a docking scheduled on 09:16 EDT (13:16 UTC) on Monday, May 22.
3 minutes and 9 seconds after SECO, Crew Dragon will separate from the second stage and open up its nose cone in order to expose the 4 forward facing Draco thrusters.
Once the forward Draco thrusters are exposed, Axiom-2 will perform a number of phasing burns to align its orbit with the ISS orbit. After the phasing burns, Axiom-2 Dragon will slowly approach the ISS and with the start of proximity operations it will enter the ISS’ Keep Out Sphere. Hard docking was early at 13:23:00 UTC.
Last but not least, after around 15 hours and 39 minutes, C212-2 Freedom with Axiom-2 crew will dock at the ‘Zenit’ International Docking Adaptor – IDA port. They should be called IDA-3, since that is the built number.
The first Docking Adaptor IDA-1 was lost during the CRS-7 inflight anomaly.
The Axiom-2 Science Payload
Hundreds of experiments will be carried out by the Axiom-2 astronauts on board the ISS, ranging from biomedical experiments to material science experiments to technology and artificial intelligence testing. This is a handful of the experiments that will be done during the Axiom-2 mission.
During their time on the orbiting international laboratory, the crew will conduct over 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations in areas such as life and physical sciences to advanced materials, technology development, in-space production applications, and even student-led research.
The only thing I didn’t find among the sources was a cargo manifest of, what I presume would be, crew supplies and science experiments in the fragile end.
The Axiom-2 Dragon
YouTube screenshot of the Axiom-2 crew strapped in the Dragon getting ready to launch
The Axiom-2 crew consist of four privately funded and trained Axiom astronauts:
Retired NASA astronaut and Axiom-2 Commander Penny Annette Whitson is also a biochemistry researcher born in Beaconsfield, Iowa.
Whitson got inspired to become an astronaut in 1969. She then went to Iowa Wesleyan College and studied biology and chemistry, graduating in 1981. Five years later, she received her doctorate in biochemistry from Rice University.
Penny Whitson joined NASA in 1989 as a research biochemist in Biomedical Operations and Research Branch and NASA-JSC. During this time she served a number of roles, including being a payload element developer, a project scientist, and deputy division chief of the medical sciences division. In April 1996, Penny Whitson became an astronaut candidate.
Penny Whitson has launched on three missions so far: STS-111 as science specialist with two Russian cosmonauts and returned with STS-113, Soyuz TMA-11 on expedition 16, and lastly on Soyuz MS-03 participating on expedition 50/51/52.
On these missions, she has spent just under 666 days in space and conducted 10 EVAs, for a total EVA time of just over 60 hours.
In October 2009, Whitson was appointed NASA Chief of the Astronaut Office. Later, she joined Axiom Space as the Director of Human Space Flight. In May 2021, she was announced as the commander of Axiom Space Mission 2.
Axiom astronaut John Shoffner is acting as pilot on this mission. Shoffner was born in Fairbanks, Alaska.
As an avid pilot, Shoffner has over 8,500 flight hours on his aircraft, including fixed-wing and military aircraft, alongside several helicopters. In his early years, Shoffner was the president of Kentucky-based telecommunications manufacturer Dura-Line. Shoffner created his own motorsports team J2-Racing in 2012.
This will be Shoffner’s first mission to space.
Mission specialist Ali AlQarni is a Saudi astronaut selected for the Axiom-2 by the Saudi Space Commission. His selection happened on Feb. 12, 2023.
AlQarni holds a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical sciences from the King Faisal Air Academy, where he served in the Royal Saudi Air Force. As an F-15SA pilot, AlQarni has over 2,400 flight hours.
This will be AlQarni’s first mission to space.
Mission specialist Rayyanah Barawi. Born in 1990, is the first female Saudi astronaut. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences from the University of Otago and a master’s in Biomedical Sciences from Alfaisal University, where she studied the adhesion of breast cancer stem cells.
This will be Barawi’s first mission to space.
Fun Fact: NASASpaceFlight accidentally called Rookie astronauts for ‘Wookies’.
Where to land the Dragon?
The opportunity for Axiom-2 to return to Earth has now been determined; they were still in orbit on ISS and docked to IDA-3 now known as IDA-Z airlock - Z for zenit.
NASA’s SpaceX Axiom-2 mission now is targeting a return to Earth no earlier than 11:05 EDT - 15:05 UTC on Tuesday, May 30, 2023.
Axiom-2 is currently expected to arrive in May 2023, with a crew of four who will work with Crew-6. Once this work is complete, Axiom-2 in Freedom will undock and return to Earth with its astronauts after an 8 day stay aboard the station.
Seven hazard areas for landing Dragon C212-2 - Recovery Location LZ-2 Panama City is chosen
The Axiom-2 Dragon spacecraft, named Freedom , is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station at 11:05 EDT - 15:05 UTC Tuesday, May 30, to begin its 12 hour journey home.
The Crew Dragon Freedom will aim for a splashdown at one of seven targeted landing zones in the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida. Recovery is fixed at the splashdown zone 2 near Panama City in the Gulf of Mexico.
Freedom will after the trunk is jettisoned have performed its deorbit burn at 22:28 EDT - 02:28 UTC and close the nose hatch cover. Then Freedom will reorient itself with its heat shield forward and enter the Earth's atmosphere above the USA.
First infrared camera view at ‘Splashdown’ videotime 59.00 showed a clock in the top right corner displaying 31/5-2023 - 02:55:07.786 UTC which is useful in calculating the actual splashdown time to the second.
Splashdown time on ‘Splashdown’ videotime was 1:08:16 equal to 03:04:23 UTC which is found by adding 9 minutes 16 seconds to the infrared camera clock.
Four minutes before splashdown, the drogue parachutes will deploy at about 18,000 feet in altitude while Freedom is moving approximately 350 miles per hour, and less than a minute later, the main parachutes deploy at about 6,000 feet in altitude while the spacecraft is moving approximately 119 miles per hour.
For normal crew rescue and recovery operations, the NASA and SpaceX teams select two primary splashdown locations from the seven possible locations about two weeks prior to return, with additional decision milestones taking place prior to crew boarding the spacecraft, during free flight, and before Freedom performs a deorbit burn.
NASA and SpaceX closely coordinate with the U.S. Coast Guard to establish a 10-nautical-mile safety zone around the expected splashdown location to ensure safety for the public and for those involved in the recovery operations, as well as the crew aboard the returning spacecraft.
The return will mark the end of the second crew rotation mission to the International Space Station of the Crew Dragon spacecraft developed in partnership between NASA and SpaceX as a part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.
Teams on the Go Navigator or other available recovery ships, including two fast boats, will be securing Axiom-2 Freedom and ensuring the spacecraft is safe for the recovery effort. As the fast boat teams complete their work, the recovery ship will move into position to hoist Freedom onto the main deck of the ship with the astronauts inside.
Once on the main deck, the crew will be taken out of the spacecraft and receive medical checks before a helicopter ride to Pensacola to board a plane for Houston. Freedom will also return important and time-sensitive research samples.
Things yet to happen. From this point on data isn’t up to date
The discarded Dragon trunk from the Axiom-2 mission, jettisoned on May 31, has now been cataloged in a 312 x 393 km x 51.4 deg orbit. 21 days later it hasn’t reentered at 03:48 UTC June 21 (8:48 pm PDT Saturday evening) over this ground area.
The low apogee of 312 km in this orbit isn’t a contributing factor in deorbiting the trunk section. It is after all a BIG barrel or dustbin, so maybe it should be rebuilt as a space debris hunter/gatherer collecting space junk.
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