SpaceX takes down Dragon crew arm, giving Starship a leg up in Florida
摘要
SpaceX于周三拆除了位于肯尼迪航天中心39A发射台的宇航员乘组进出臂。该发射台历经多次改造，曾用于阿波罗计划与航天飞机项目。自2017年起，SpaceX在此发射猎鹰火箭，并于2018年安装了新的乘组进出臂，以支持载人龙飞船任务。此次拆除是为后续星舰项目的发展腾出空间。
Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is accustomed to getting makeovers. It got another one Wednesday with the removal of the Crew Access Arm used by astronauts to board their rides to space.
Construction workers first carved the footprint for the launch pad from the Florida wetlands more than 60 years ago. NASA used the site to launch Saturn V rockets dispatching astronauts to the Moon, then converted the pad for the Space Shuttle program. The last shuttle flight lifted off from Pad 39A in 2011, and the agency leased the site to SpaceX for use as the departure point for the company's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.
SpaceX started launching from Pad 39A in 2017, then installed a new Crew Access Arm on the pad's tower the following year, replacing the aging shuttle-era arm that connected to the hatches of NASA's orbiters. SpaceX added the new arm ahead of the first test flight of the company's human-rated Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2019. Astronauts started using the pathway, suspended more than 200 feet above the pad surface, beginning with the first crew flight on a Dragon spacecraft in 2020.
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