Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. Computing
  4. News

This awesome SpaceX simulator lets you pilot the Crew Dragon in space

By
Add as a preferred source on Google

Ahead of its historic mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on May 27, SpaceX has launched an online simulator that lets you try your hand at docking the Crew Dragon capsule with the orbiting outpost.

“This simulator will familiarize you with the controls of the actual interface used by NASA astronauts to manually pilot the [Crew Dragon] vehicle to the ISS,” SpaceX said in a tweet.

Recommended Videos

The much-anticipated Demo-2 mission is set to put the U.S. back at the forefront of space exploration as NASA looks ahead to a crewed mission to the moon in 2024. It will also mark the end of U.S. reliance on Russia’s Soyuz program, with NASA sending astronauts into space from American soil for the first time since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011.

For SpaceX, its first crewed mission comes after years of successful cargo trips to and from the ISS with the Dragon capsule. Demo-2 will be the latest in a string of achievements for the commercial space company, which also has its eye on even grander goals involving missions far beyond the lunar surface.

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be inside the Crew Dragon capsule as it approaches the ISS in a couple of weeks. The pair used the simulator for part of their mission preparations, but they shouldn’t have to call on their intense training to dock the capsule as the process is designed to take place autonomously. Still, if something goes awry, they’ll be ready to step in and take control of the spacecraft.

“Crew Dragon’s system includes touchscreens and physical manual control options with robust fault tolerance built into the system,” NASA said this week. The space agency said the touchscreens can be operated with and without the SpaceX spacesuit gloves, and the control system has been thoroughly tested during hundreds of hours of training and joint simulations with the crew.

Hit the question mark at the top left of the simulator for precise instructions on how to navigate the capsule. Final tip from SpaceX for the crucial docking procedure: “Movement in space is slow and requires patience and precision … successful docking is achieved when all green numbers in the center of the interface are below 0.2.” Got that? Now go ahead and see if you have what it takes.

Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Topics
NASA’s new telescope can see 100 times more sky than Hubble in a single shot
NASA just launched a $4 billion telescope to map billions of galaxies
NASA Roman Telescope Launch Featured

The Hubble telescope has an almost legendary status. Over the last three decades, Hubble gave us some of the most spectacular close-ups of the universe ever captured, and now, NASA’s newest space telescope wants to see the bigger picture. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 a.m. EDT on August 30. Roman is now beginning a roughly three-month journey toward the Sun-Earth L2 point, nearly a million miles away, where it will spend its primary five-year mission surveying huge portions of the cosmos.

Roman carries a 2.4-meter primary mirror, the same diameter as Hubble’s, but its Wide Field Instrument can capture a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s. NASA expects it to use that combination of sharpness and scale to map billions of galaxies, study dark matter and dark energy, and discover enormous numbers of previously unknown worlds.

Read more
NASA built the Roman Space Telescope to study dark matter, but it can also help protect Earth from killer asteroids
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope wasn't built to hunt asteroids, but it turns out to be great at it.
Nancy Grace Roman space telescope.

NASA is about to launch a telescope built to unlock some of the universe's biggest mysteries, and it turns out that same design could help protect Earth along the way.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch from Kennedy Space Center on August 30, 2026, with a primary mission focused on studying dark matter and dark energy - the invisible forces shaping galaxies and cosmic expansion. Researchers now say its unique design also makes it unexpectedly effective at spotting dangerous asteroids headed our way (via MIT Technology Review).

Read more
Space is becoming Bezos and Musk’s next data center site, and we have every reason to worry
The AI boom is coming for the night sky
How Vast's space station will look in orbit.

AI data centers already consume vast amounts of electricity and water on Earth, so Silicon Valley has begun looking somewhere considerably more spacious... literally.

Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, along with several other companies, have proposed enormous constellations of satellites designed to operate as orbital data centers. However, environmental groups and former space officials are now warning that putting them into orbit at the proposed scale could have severe consequences for Earth's atmosphere and the night sky.

Read more