Home » News » A final test flight empty and at high risk for NASA

A final test flight empty and at high risk for NASA


The Falcon 9 which should launch this Sunday. – Florida Today-USA TODAY via Imag / SIPA

SpaceX will simulate this Sunday the emergency ejection of astronauts from a rocket a few minutes after launch, the last major test before the dispatch in two months of a crew of the
Nasa to the International Space Station (ISS). The test, with no one on board, will take place between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. (1 p.m. and 7 p.m. GMT) at the Kennedy Space Center in
Florida. Originally scheduled for Saturday, it was pushed back due to the winds and rough seas in the ditching area.

Elon Musk’s space company, under contract to NASA, has attached its new Crew Dragon capsule to the top of one of its Falcon 9 rockets, programmed to launch the spacecraft into orbit.

A simulation

One minute and 24 seconds after takeoff, at an altitude of approximately 19 kilometers above the Atlantic, simulating an anomaly, a abandonment sequence will be triggered: the capsule will ignite its powerful SuperDraco propellants to eject from the rocket, and distance itself as quickly as possible. In a manned mission, this would save the strapped astronauts inside Dragon, if the rocket ever had a problem or was on the wrong path.

Crew Dragon will continue its journey to the sky alone up to an altitude of about 40 km, before falling back naturally to the Atlantic Ocean, while the rocket will disintegrate in flight under the effect of the sudden separation. The rocket may well explode and create a “fireball,” warned Benji Reed of SpaceX. Then the four large parachutes of the capsule will open to slow down the fall and the landing in the Atlantic, where rescue teams will be pre-positioned.

A first manned flight no earlier than early March

The success of this test is essential for SpaceX and for NASA, which urgently needs to certify a vehicle to transport its astronauts to the ISS this year. Since 2011, the United States has been obliged to have its astronauts travel on the Russian Soyuz rockets, the only ones to have this capacity since the retirement of the American shuttles. NASA signed a similar contract with Boeing, which developed the Starliner capsule.

In March 2019, SpaceX made a one-week empty round trip to the ISS with Crew Dragon. In April, a ground test of the SuperDraco thrusters had caused an explosion, but SpaceX and NASA claim to have solved the problem after investigation. Boeing was scheduled to perform the same mission in December, but an orbit error shortened the mission and brought Starliner back two days after launch, a setback for the aerospace giant.

The first manned flight of Crew Dragon will have as passengers American astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken. If all goes well, the mission will take place at the earliest in early March, said Kathy Lueders, head of NASA’s commercial flight program on Friday.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.