Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, January 27 (Xinhua) SpaceX has begun building a spare launch pad for its cargo dragon and manned dragon spacecraft, and says the facility could be operational as early as the fall of 2023.

Reuters reported last year that NASA was concerned that SpaceX testing starships at the Florida launch site, the only launch pad capable of launching dragon spacecraft, could increase the risk. In September 2022, NASA and SpaceX acknowledged plans to modify the LC-40 for the Dragon launch and said they had decided to proceed.

Recently, SpaceX and NASA held another press conference to confirm that some construction work is already under way and reported that LC-40 may be ready to support its first launch in less than a year.

SpaceX's Sarah Walker said the company had made "good progress" in preparing Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral to support the autumn launch of the Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Station, followed by an increase in crew launch capacity.

Steve Stich, commercial crew project manager for NASA, said SpaceX was already cleaning up the site and started piling for the new tower of Pad 40 for manned and freight missions.

Regulatory documents show that the new tower is 81 meters high, nearly 1/3 lower than the 110m tower modified by SpaceX at Pad 39A. In addition, LC-40 needs a swinging maintenance arm to connect the tower to the dragon ship hatch. It is said that the manipulator can be built in different places, further reducing the downtime required.

SpaceX said LC-40 will be ready to support its first dragon launch mission as early as the fall of 2023, the first mission to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, which means towers, arms and pads do not need to be reviewed immediately.

In theory, SpaceX could even launch a Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft from LC-40 without a tower or arm, because the tower's sole purpose during unmanned missions is to help workers load volatile cargo. CTOnews.com believes that SpaceX can resume the practice of its original Dragon 1 spacecraft and devise a method of delaying the loading of cargo while Falcon 9 and Dragon are still horizontal.

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