Cargo Dragon C211

Dragon C211 is the third Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft, and the third in a line of International Space Station resupply craft which replaced the Dragon capsule, manufactured by SpaceX. The missions are contracted by NASA under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program. It flew for the first time on the CRS-26 mission in November 2022.

Cargo Dragon
C211 is the third SpaceX Dragon 2 cargo variant. C211 and the other Cargo Dragons are different from the crewed variant by launching without seats, cockpit controls, astronaut life support systems, or SuperDraco abort engines. The Cargo Dragon improved on many aspects of the original Dragon design, including the recovery and refurbishment process.

Cargo Dragon capsules splash down under parachutes in the Atlantic Ocean east of Florida or in the Gulf of Mexico, rather than the previous recovery zone in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California. This NASA preference was added to all CRS-2 awards to allow for cargo to be more quickly returned to the Kennedy Space Center after splashdown.