Re: Dragon capsules?

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Diggr

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I watched the separation of the latest Dragon from the ISS, and I read that is safely down and on it's way back to California.<br><br>I'm having trouble understanding exactly how that thing gets home.&nbsp; What happens to the solar arrays on the trunk?&nbsp; And does it enter the atmosphere "pointy end first"?&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>Any ideas on where I can locate this information?&nbsp; Thanks in advance.<br><br>Diggr
 
Dracos reorient, deorbits on the picax shield, three chutes and a splash like pretty much any other capsule. Then it gets fished out of the Pacific and barged back to Cali.
 
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The trunk with the solar panels separates from the capsule before reentry and burns up in the atmosphere. The capsule itself then enters pointy end "up" just like Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules did.

There's graphics somewhere that describe it but I can't point to them at the moment.
 
Under the principle of teaching one to fish....

A highly useful way to find out about things like this is to use google search, type enough keywords to get it to search for the right subject (Dragon Spacecraft, or Dragon SpaceX, or Dragon SpaceX Spacecraft), and the add the keyword "Wiki".

The wiki pages will usually have a lot of good info.

And the Wiki's usually have a LOT of links at the bottom for more info.

That's not a catch-all solution, but certainly should be step one (Google), two (Wiki), and three (Links on the Wiki page).

You could also search without the "wiki" keyword, looking for links to say SpaceX's own site and other sites that may have info (Ironically SpaceX's site does NOT have as much specific info as one might expect). Also don't stick to just the text links, try the "images" option which may show image of what you want to know (like reentry sequence if you added those keywords), which can be a good back-door way to find a web page with good text info on it.

When searching on your own fails to produce specific info you want, then it's time to ask others. Otherwise, people who reply to you are mostly doing the above steps you could have done, unless they personally have specific sites bookmarked and/or knowledge about certain topics.
 
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