Dragon C208 is the first Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft, and the first in a line of

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

resupply craft which replaced the

Dragon A dragon is a Magic (supernatural), magical legendary creature that appears in the folklore of multiple cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but European dragon, dragons in Western cultures since the Hi ...

capsule, manufactured by

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

. The mission is contracted by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

under the

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 phase of CRS contracts (CRS-1) were sign ...

(CRS) program. It flew for the first time on the CRS-21 mission on 6 December 2020. This was the first flight for SpaceX under NASA's CRS Phase 2 contract awarded in January 2016. This was also the first time a Cargo Dragon was docked at the same time as a Crew Dragon spacecraft (

SpaceX Crew-1 SpaceX Crew-1 (was also known as USCV-1 or simply Crew-1) was the first operational crewed flight of a SpaceX Dragon 2, Crew Dragon spacecraft and the maiden flight of the Crew Dragon Resilience, Crew Dragon ''Resilience'' spacecraft. It was ...

). This mission used Booster B1058.4.

Cargo Dragon

''C208'' is the first

SpaceX Dragon 2 Dragon 2 is a class of partially reusable spacecraft developed, manufactured, and operated by the American space company SpaceX for flights to the International Space Station (ISS) and private spaceflight missions. The spacecraft, which consi ...

cargo variant. ''C208'' and the other Cargo Dragons are different from the crewed variant by launching without seats, cockpit controls, astronaut life support systems, or

SuperDraco SuperDraco is a hypergolic propellant rocket engine designed and built by SpaceX. It is part of the SpaceX Draco family of rocket engines. A redundant array of eight SuperDraco engines provides fault-tolerant propulsion for use as a launch escap ...

abort engines. The Cargo Dragon improves on many aspects of the original Dragon design, including the recovery and refurbishment process. The new Cargo Dragon capsules splashes down under parachutes in the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the ...

east of

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

or in the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...

, rather than the previous recovery zone in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

west of

Baja California Baja California, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California, is a state in Mexico. It is the northwesternmost of the 32 federal entities of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1952, the area was known as the North Territory of B ...

. This NASA preference was added to all CRS-2 awards to allow for cargo to be more quickly returned to the

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 NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten NASA facilities#List of field c ...

after

splashdown Splashdown is the method of landing a spacecraft or launch vehicle in a body of water, usually by parachute. This has been the primary recovery method of American capsules including NASA’s Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Orion along with th ...

.SpaceX Dragon capsule splashes down off Florida’s west coast
/ref>

Flights

References

{{SpaceX SpaceX Dragon 2 Individual space vehicles NASA spacecraft Uncrewed spacecraft Cargo spacecraft

Cargo Dragon

Flights

See also

References