It was the last big test for Elon Musk’s business, and mission accomplished. SpaceX simulated, Sunday, January 19, the emergency ejection of astronauts from a rocket a few minutes after launch. In two months, it will be used to send a crew from NASA to the International Space Station (ISS). You can review, above, the distribution of this crucial essay.
The test, with no one on board, took place at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was successfully completed, and the capsule successfully landed. Originally scheduled for Saturday, it was pushed back due to the winds and rough seas in the ditching area.
SpaceX had attached its Crew Dragon capsule to the top of one of its Falcon 9 rockets, programmed as if it were to launch the spacecraft into orbit. About a minute and 30 seconds after takeoff, at an altitude of about 19 kilometers above the Atlantic, a sequence of abandonment started. The capsule then ignited its propellants to move away as quickly as possible from the rocket: in a manned mission, this would save the astronauts strapped inside, if ever the rocket had a problem or followed a bad trajectory.
Crew Dragon continued, alone, its course towards the sky before falling naturally towards the Atlantic Ocean. The four large parachutes slowed down its fall and ditching in the Atlantic, where rescue teams were pre-positioned.
The success of this test was 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.
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