This week, NASA revealed that the International Space Station’s Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) is recycling 98 percent of all water astronauts bring aboard the station…
This week, NASA revealed that the International Space Station’s Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) is recycling 98 percent of all water astronauts bring aboard the station…
Yeah, it would big news if a Dragon burned up.
I assumed they meant it was ejected during reentry but on reflection that would not be worth the risk…though I do like the idea of flaming dragon poop streaming across the sky.
You’re not far off, most spacecraft have multiple parts, you can simplify to two:
the orbital module and the return module
The Dragon does indeed have an expendable module they call the “trunk”. The capsule comes home but the trunk doesn’t.
The NG Cygnus, ESA ATV, and JAXA HTV are all fully expendable. They burn up completely.
The soyuz is the best example, it has three parts and only one comes home. They save a lot of weight by only needing to make one part strong enough to make it back.
Picture from Wikipedia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Soyuz-TMA_descent_module.jpg