SpaceX focused on Dragon integration before demo flight

SpaceX continues to work through challenges integrating the Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket as it prepares for a first NASA demonstration flight targeted for Dec. 7 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

"We believe we're in very good posture for the upcoming mission with the booster," Ken Bowersox, the company's vice president of mission assurance and astronaut safety, said today. "What’s delayed us most is integrating the spacecraft."

"It's interesting -- you'd think the spacecraft on the front is the tiny, simple part, but it’s actually just as complicated or more complicated than that big old booster that takes it up into orbit," he continued. "So we're working through some final integration activities now, and should be launching soon."

Bowersox spoke at end of the American Astronautical Society's two-day national conference in Cape Canaveral, which focused on the next decade of International Space Station operations. A final panel discussed plans for commercial cargo and crew transportation to the station.

After the shuttle's retirement next year, NASA expects SpaceX's Dragon vehicle to make a first cargo delivery to the station in December 2011, timing a NASA official said was "important" to maintaining full station operations. Before then, two or three demonstration flights are planned.

The first demonstration under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program will be the first operational flight of the Dragon, which will orbit Earth twice before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

Orbital Sciences Corp., the other company NASA has contracted to deliver cargo to the station, plans a demonstration flight next summer of its Cygnus spacecraft atop a Taurus II rocket launched from Virginia. A cargo mission is planned in early 2012.

"Commercialization of cargo is on its way, and between our two companies, I think we’re going to change the way NASA looks at commercial world as well as uses it," said Frank Culbertson, head of Orbital's human spaceflight programs. "It’s a great first step in what I think will be extensive commercialization of activities."