SpaceX will develop a souped-up version of its Dragon spacecraft for NASA to handle the deorbiting of the International Space Station around the end of the decade.
At a July 17 briefing, NASA and SpaceX officials provided new details about the United States Deorbit Vehicle (USDV) spacecraft NASA selected SpaceX to build June 26 under a contract worth up to $843 million. At the time of the announcement, neither the agency nor the company described the design of the spacecraft or its specific capabilities.
The USDV will be based on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft but with a redesigned, larger trunk section with more Draco thrusters. The spacecraft will have 46 Draco thrusters, 16 for attitude control and 30 to perform the maneuvers needed to lower the station’s orbit at the end of its life, said Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission management at SpaceX.
The “enhanced” trunk section, she said, is twice as long as the regular one and will include engines, propellant tanks, power generation and other systems. It will store six times the propellant as the current Dragon spacecraft, while generating and storing three to four times the power. “It’s almost a spacecraft in and of itself,” she said. more
Get the hell out of the way of that bucket of bolts!
Will those moron nasa fake astronauts still be on it? Why does that woman bother me so much with all her stupid hair in 0-G ?
Park it on the moon just because you can.
Is NASA going to try and reclaim/reuse any of it?
If not, send it into the sun.
May it land on DC.