James Dean

FLORIDA TODAY

The coming week is another big one for SpaceX, whose unmanned Dragon capsule is scheduled to depart the International Space Station and return to Earth on Wednesday morning.

The station’s 58-foot robotic arm is expected to release the Dragon and its 3,700 pounds of cargo at 9:18 a.m., beginning a less than six-hour journey culminating in a Pacific Ocean splashdown under parachutes.

Because of a failed launch last summer, this Dragon will be the first to return science experiments and hardware from the ISS in a year. No other spacecraft flying today can bring large quantities of cargo back down to the ground.

Among this mission’s precious cargo are biological samples collected during former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly’s yearlong mission on the station that ended in March.

The Dragon is returning almost exactly one month after its April 10 arrival at the station, two days after launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

If splashdown conditions are unfavorable Wednesday, the Dragon's departure could be delayed a few days.

SpaceX flies Falcon 9 from Cape, lands on Atlantic Ocean barge

Antares ready for rollout

Orbital ATK this week plans to roll out its new-look Antares rocket to a Wallops Island launch pad where it is expected to test-fire a new Russian engines later this month.

The Antares was last seen exploding seconds after an October 2014 liftoff, thanks to a failure by Soviet-era engines that had been refurbished by Aerojet Rocketdyne.

The rocket’s power plant now consists of NPO Energomash RD-181 engines, whose primary purpose in the near-term will be to boost Cygnus cargo vehicles on their way to the International Space Station.

Orbital ATK expects the Antares to return to flight in July, and fly again around November.

While the Antares was being “re-engined” and its launch pad repaired, Orbital ATK launched two Cygnus spacecraft from Florida on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rockets.

The second of those, launched in March, barely made it to orbit when the Atlas V’s Russian RD-180 main engine shut down six seconds early.

FIT cockpit design claims grand prize

A Florida Institute of Technology graduate student team has won the $2,500 grand prize in a university competition to design the cockpit layout for a proposed “single-person spacecraft.”

The spacecraft concept, under development by Maryland-based Genesis Engineering Solutions, could enable astronauts to perform International Space Station repairs in shirt sleeves rather that spacesuits. The pod equipped with robotic arms could also service satellites or collect asteroid samples.

The four-person team from Florida Tech's School of Human-Centered Design, Innovation, and Art submitted a design that was “well thought out and very logical to follow,” according to Paul Richards, a project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and a former astronaut who was one of the contest judges, along with human factors engineers, robotics experts and other space industry leaders.

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“Your work is superior and your concept represents the highest academic and professional standards,” Genesis CEO Robert Rashford said in a congratulatory message. “Hopefully, one day when the Single-Person Spacecraft is in operation, you will be able to point to evidence of your contribution.”

“I am sure that the SPS project is just a great beginning and that we will contribute to human spaceflight research and development much more in the near future,” said team leader Ondrej Doule, assistant professor in the School of Human Centered Design, Innovation and Arts.

Team members were Azeez Sathick Batcha, Kareim Elbaz, DeVere Kiss and Joseph Torkaman.

Space Club welcomes Lugo

Space research at the University of Central Florida will be the focus of Ray Lugo’s lunch presentation Tuesday to the National Space Club Florida Committee in Cape Canaveral.

A former Kennedy Space Center manager and director of NASA’s Glenn Research Center, Lugo now leads the UCF’s Florida Space Institute.

Lugo joined KSC as a NASA engineer in 1975 and was deputy director of its Launch Services Program before departing for Glenn. He owns a bachelor’s degree from UCF and master’s degree from the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne.

Visit www.nscfl.org for more information on space club events.

Pale black dot

Monday morning offers a rare opportunity to see Mercury cross the sun as a tiny black dot.

The “transit” only visible from Earth about 13 times each century (the last was in 2006) starts at 7:12 a.m. and ends at 2:42 p.m.

Observers in the Eastern United States may be able to see the journey through a telescope or binoculars — but remember, only if they are “outfitted with a solar filter as you can’t safely look at the sun directly,” NASA warns.

Several NASA satellites will be watching the event from space. Scientists will discuss it during a program airing on NASA TV at 10:30 a.m.

In other Mercury news, scientists with NASA’s Messenger mission last week released the first global elevation map of its surface, “revealing in stunning detail the topography across the entire innermost planet and paving the way for scientists to characterize fully the planet’s geologic history.”

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 orjdean@floridatoday.com.And follow on Twitter at@flatoday_jdeanand on Facebook atfacebook.com/jamesdeanspace.