Wednesday’s short, uncrewed test in Florida marks a big milestone on SpaceX’s road to ferrying NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in the next two years.
Even though Dragon was in the air for less than two minutes, the test should help SpaceX engineers gather key information about a potentially life-saving part of the spaceflight system.
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company based in California, wanted to see to see how the spaceflight system’s launch escape behaved during its first real test. Dragon’s abort system is designed to propel the capsule — and any astronauts on board — to safety in case the rocket experiences major a problem during flight.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon launched on its test with a dummy tucked inside the capsule and a bunch of sensors used to gather data during the flight.
“The purpose of the dummy is to collect data on the forces (gravitational loads) being experienced inside the spacecraft,” SpaceX wrote in a news release. “This along with data gathered from the vehicle will help ensure crewmembers can withstand the environments seen during a launch abort.”
The spacecraft flew 1,500 meters, about 5,000 feet, into the air from the pad after firing its 3D-printed thrusters that will be used to move a crewed Dragon safely away from any danger. The craft’s trunk then separated from the capsule, Dragon then came back to Earth under its parachutes, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.
Earlier launch escape systems made use of a tower that would spark to life and pull a spacecraft to safety. Those kinds of systems were only useful until the spacecraft hit a specific altitude, according to SpaceX, leaving the crew vulnerable to a rocket failure with now recourse for at least some part of its trip to orbit.
“SpaceX’s launch abort system, however, is integrated directly into the spacecraft,” SpaceX added. “This means Crew Dragon will have launch escape capability from the launch pad all the way to orbit.”
The test was mounted as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program — created to get private spaceships flying NASA astronauts to the International Space Station by 2017. At the moment, SpaceX and Boeing have both been awarded multi-billion dollar contracts to develop their spacecraft to fly astronauts to the ISS.
At the moment, NASA relies on a contract with Russia to transport astronauts to the space station. NASA astronauts have hitched rides on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft since the end of the space shuttle program, but the Commercial Crew Program is designed to end NASA's reliance on Russian vehicles for transportation
SpaceX’s crewed Dragon spacecraft should be able to carry up to seven people to orbit once it starts flying to space. But it has a few more tests to go before Dragon can carry humans to the space station.
“Pending the outcome of the pad abort test, SpaceX will then conduct an in-flight abort test,” SpaceX said. “With the in-flight abort, we will test the same launch abort system, however this time in mid-flight during an actual launch. Both the pad abort and in-flight abort will be challenging tests, but the data gathered here will be key to helping develop one of the safest, most reliable spacecraft ever flown.”
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