Dragon is a space capsule designed by SpaceX to provide supplies to the International space station.
The Dragon spacecraft is made up of a pressurized capsule and unpressurized trunk used
for Earth to LEO transport of pressurized cargo, unpressurized cargo, and/or crew members.
Initiated internally by SpaceX in 2005, Dragon will be utilized to fulfill the NASA COTS
contract for demonstration of cargo re-supply of the ISS.
The Dragon capsule is comprised of three main elements: the Nosecone, which protects the
vessel and the docking adaptor during ascent; the Pressurized Section, which houses the
crew and/or pressurized cargo; and the Service Section, which contains avionics, the RCS
system, parachutes, and other support infrastructure. In addition an unpressurized trunk
is included, which provides for the stowage of unpressurized cargo and will support
Dragon's solar arrays and thermal radiators.
SpaceX was one of two winners of the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services
competition. The SpaceX portion of the award is $278 million for three flight
demonstrations of Falcon-9 v1.0 carrying the Dragon
spaceship, which occured in mid 2009 and 2010. The prototype Dragon C1 capsule lacked several systems of the operational Dragon-C capsule. The second and third test flights were eventually combined into one mission and
culminated in the transfer of cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) and return of
cargo safely to Earth.
The agreement also contains an option for three demonstration flights of the seven
person crewed version of Dragon taking people to the ISS and back. The cargo Dragon and
crewed Dragon are almost identical, with the exception of the crew escape system, the life
support system and onboard controls that allow the crew to take over control from the
flight computer when needed.
In addition to servicing NASA needs, the F9/Dragon will possibly also be of service to
Bigelow Aerospace, which plans to orbit a commercial space station. Bigelow Aerospace and
SpaceX have an ongoing dialogue to ensure that F9/Dragon meets the human transportation
needs of their planned space station as efficiently as possible.
In December 2008 SpaceX received a contract under CRS-1 to deliver 20.000 kg to the ISS by the
means of 12 Dragon flights. In March 2015, three more missions were added to the contract for launches in 2017. In December 2015, five final missions were awarded under CRS-1.
Dragon CRS-7 was lost in a launch failure.
Under the CRS-2 selction in January 2015 Dragon was selected for a minimum of six missions, which will use a cargo version of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
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