IPFS News Link • Space Travel and Exploration
Dragon docks at space station in historic 1st
• APThe privately bankrolled Dragon capsule arrived at the International Space Station for a historic docking Friday, captured by astronauts wielding a giant robot arm.
It succeeded in making the first commercial delivery into the cosmos.
2 Comments in Response to Dragon docks at space station in historic 1st
Hey, Powell! The link to "Read the full story" does not function. Might you remedy this? This was a newsworthy story. I was unable to access the whole article from any of your pages.
http://www.space.com/15874-private-dragon-capsule-space-station-arrival.html
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Dragon has been using a laser-based LIDAR system to send laser pulses toward the space station and measure its distance by calculating how long the pulses take to reflect back. Mission controllers realized the LIDAR was picking up stray light reflections from the station's large and shiny Japanese Kibo laboratory that were confusing the sensors.
Engineers quickly came up with a solution.
"The SpaceX team believes they have found a way to fix the problem with their LIDAR sensors on Dragon," NASA commentator Josh Byerly said. "SpaceX was able to basically adapt their LIDAR sensors onboard Dragon to sort of, for lack of a better word, close its eyes a little bit and have a more narrow field of view.""
[A NASA Committee formed to study the problem and come up with a solution is still working on what to name itself before proceeding further. ;-) ]