The latest addition to the space museum at work is incredibly special to me. This is the parachute system cover panel from the recent DM-2 mission that brought Bob & Doug to the ISS and safely back for a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. When you see the SpaceX logo on the Dragon in various photos, this is it, a bit worn from reentry.
It spent 63 days in space, and on reentry, it was the first panel to jettison off Dragon, exposing the recovery system harnesses, and followed soon afterward by the firing of two drogue parachute mortars located on either side. The delta panel covers the big hole at top center above the side hatch. It covers the drogue fitting, main fittings, and drogue risers.
The white outer layer is the SPAM (SpaceX Proprietary Ablative Material)-Lite heat shield that covers Dragon. It is a syntactic foam, made from silicone polymer with tiny silica spheres embedded in it. Beneath that is the carbon fiber panel, sandwiching a honeycomb for structural stiffness. The inner-most layer is a reflective silver liner to minimize thermal flux during re-entry from the black carbon fiber which might melt parachute recovery materials.
On the backside, there are three powerful solid titanium spring assemblies that jettisoned the hatch.
The Dragon parachute harness attach points are off-center on the capsule, so it comes in at an angle to slip into the ocean, versus a smack of the heatshield if it came in flat faced. This flight was the first astronaut splashdown since 1975.
It was recovered from the Gulf by a local fishing boat, and it just arrived (I’ll design a custom stand to display it vertically with visibility from both sides). The SpaceX recovery system engineering lead inspected it today for post-flight analysis.
I will design a customer stand for it so it will be proudly on display between the RL-10 engine and Mercury spacesuit in the space collection at work: tinyurl.com/FVspace
It is incredibly rare to find mission-critical flown hardware, and this particular flight was historic — the revival of America’s human spaceflight and the beginning of many adventures of exploration to come.
The perspective from the ISS as SpaceX DM-2 approaches. This delta panel with SpaceX logo clearly visible. Photo by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko:
and rolling out for launch
You can see the circular drogue mortar covers at the corners of the S and X in the logo, and the recovered panel carries the logo.
Part numbers on panel
Detail on the 
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