General Characteristics
The Dragon spacecraft consists of a nose-cone cap that jettisons after launch, a conventional blunt-cone ballistic capsule, and a trunk equipped with two solar arrays. The capsule utilizes a PICA-X heat shield – based on a proprietary variant of NASA's phenolic impregnated carbon ablator (PICA) material – designed to protect the capsule during Earth atmospheric reentry, even at high return velocities from Lunar and Martian missions. The Dragon capsule is re-usable, and can be flown on multiple missions. However, the trunk is not recoverable; it separates from the capsule before re-entry and burns up in Earth's atmosphere.
The spacecraft is launched atop a Falcon 9 booster. The Dragon capsule is equipped with 18 Draco thrusters, dual-redundant in all axes: any two can fail without compromising the vehicle's control over its pitch, yaw, roll and translation. During its initial cargo and crew flights, the Dragon capsule will land in the Pacific Ocean and be returned to the shore by ship. However, SpaceX plans to eventually install deployable landing gear and use eight upgraded SuperDraco thrusters to perform a solid earth propulsive landing.
The trunk section, which carries the spacecraft's solar panels and allows the transport of unpressurized cargo to the ISS, will first be utilized for cargo on the SpaceX CRS-2 mission, which is scheduled for early 2013.
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