What do the SpaceX rocket and cargo capsule look like?

In our featured image, you can see that the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is mounted with the Dragon capsule and base.

Breaking the modules apart, the individual modules tell a more detailed story.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket (without the Dragon capsule and base)

Image: Falcon rocket on the pad, Space Exploration Technologies, (SpaceX) Space Launch Complex – Three West (SLC-3W), Vandenberg Airforce Base Image

Photo attribution: By courtesy of SpaceX (http://www.spacex.com/gallery/falcon_vertical.jpg) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

The SpaceX Dragon capsule

Dragon Capsule – Pressurized Section

Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) unwrap Spacex Dragon Capsule[/caption]

Workers unwrap the latest Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) Dragon capsule inside a building at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Oct. 23 so it can be processed and attached to the top of a Falcon 9 rocket on Space Launch Complex-40 for the company’s next demonstration test flight for NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.

Image and caption attribution: By Charisse Nahser [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The pressurized section of the spacecraft, also referred to as the capsule, is designed to carry both cargo and humans into space. Towards the base of the capsule but outside the pressurized structure are the Draco thrusters, Dragon’s guidance navigation and control (GNC) bay and Dragon’s advanced heat shield.

Source: SpaceX website.

Dragon Capsule – Trunk and Solar Arrays

Image attribution: Wikimedia Commons

Dragon’s trunk supports the spacecraft during ascent to space, carries unpressurized cargo and houses Dragon’s solar arrays. The trunk and solar arrays remain attached to Dragon until shortly before reentry to Earth’s atmosphere, when they are jettisoned.

See the source article at SpaceX.com.

To see the historic May 22, 2012, launch of the first cargo delivery flight to the ISS, visit the next page.