SpaceX returning Dragon splashdowns to west coast after space debris unexpectedly makes landfall

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – SpaceX next year will move recovery operations of its Dragon cargo and crew spacecrafts back to California after five years of splashdowns off the Florida coast.

Friday, the company’s Dragon mission management director said debris from the bottom of the spacecraft called the trunk has been discovered on land a couple of times starting in Australia in 2022.

A charred piece of an expendable trunk that also unexpectedly survived reentry was found in May in North Carolina. 

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And in Naples, a family is suing NASA after a piece of the International Space Station crashed through their roof. 

No one was hurt in any of the falling debris, but Sarah Walker said SpaceX is trying to prevent similar instances.

Instead of leaving the trunk in orbit expecting it to burn up in the atmosphere, Walker said SpaceX will handle the trunk like it used to do when Dragon splashed down in the Pacific Ocean – keeping it attached to the spacecraft until after reentry.

SpaceX did it this way 21 times starting in 2010.

“What we’ll do is we’ll implement a software change to complete the deorbit burn before jettisoning the trunk like we did with Dragon 1,” Walker said in a press conference. “And then, the trunk will safely land up range in an unpopulated area of the ocean again.”

With moving Dragon recoveries out west, that means one of the SpaceX ships at Port Canaveral will be moving too.

Walker said another reason for the move is no more hurricane seasons.

“When we looked at the flight rules for wind, rain, wave height, all of the criteria that determine our flight rules for return, we actually saw that the west coast sites that we’re looking at have much better weather which allows us to have much better return availabilities,” she said.

Getting Dragon ready to fly again will still continue to happen at the Cape.

So after recovery in the Pacific, SpaceX will have to move the capsule cross-country.

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