NASA App Allows You To Be SpaceX Crew Dragon Pilot: Launch, Dock Rocket

Space agency NASA has unveiled an app providing a simulated experience of commercial crew mission in a capsule right from planning to execution including docking.

The app gives users the piloting experience aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner as it takes the user through a slew of mission processes. The two space taxis will ferry crews to ISS for NASA starting 2020.

The app takes the user through processes such as spacecraft choice, mission type, crew selection, launch, and the docking.

This space app, like a cash app, offers value with its educative exercise covering every step of the mission process, unlike other flight simulators.

In the app, the docking with the International Space Station (ISS) can be done both in automatic mode and manual mode. According to some users, manual mode is more challenging and carries fun.

From the profiles of 10 real astronauts, one can select the staff for a mission. The launch assembly is well guided with a lot of information about each element in terms of boosters, crew capsules, and other aspects.

SpaceX conducts Crew Dragon launch escape test

Meanwhile, the SpaceX launch of the Crew Dragon astronaut capsule escape test has been successful on Nov. 13 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

This static fire paved for more advanced flight tests ahead, including IFA or in-flight abort test designed to demonstrate that the capsule can keep astronauts safe if anything goes wrong at the time of launch.

The same test in April this year caused an explosion while attempting to test-fire SuperDraco escape thrusters. That destroyed the capsule and forced SpaceX to rework the abort propulsion systems with a new design.

After the successful static fire on Wednesday, SpaceX is in a position to prepare for the IFA test in December. But there will be a review of the latest test data by SpaceX and NASA. Thereafter the date for the in-flight abort test will be decided.

Meanwhile, two astronauts on the ISS will start a series of spacewalks this week to repair an instrument located outside the ISS.

NASA officials said on Nov. 12 at a press conference that its astronaut Andrew Morgan and European astronaut Luca Parmitano will do the spacewalk on Nov. 15 and replace a cooling system on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) instrument installed on the truss.

There will be four spacewalks until the new cooling system replaces the one working on the station since 2011, per NASA news.