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SpaceX confirms anomaly during Crew Dragon engine test
An accident Saturday during an engine test on a Crew Dragon test vehicle at Cape Canaveral sent a reddish-orange plume into the sky visible for miles around, a setback for SpaceX and NASA as teams prepare the capsule for its first mission with astronauts.
SpaceX is testing the Crew Dragon ahead of the capsule's first test flight with astronauts later this year, following a successful Crew Dragon demonstration mission to the International Space Station in early March.
SpaceX confirmed the accident, first reported by Florida Today, in a statement Saturday evening.
"Earlier today, SpaceX conducted a series of engine tests on a Crew Dragon test vehicle on our test stand at Landing Zone 1 in Cape Canaveral, Florida," a company spokesperson said. "The initial tests completed successfully but the final test resulted in an anomaly on the test stand."
A photo captured by a Florida Today photographer from a local beach showed an orange plume visible on the horizon in the direction of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Such plumes are usually associated with burning or leaking toxic hypergolic propellants.
Also at NASASpaceFlight and Ars Technica.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday April 21 2019, @04:56PM (1 child)
True. Unfortunately, the anomaly seems to have completely destroyed the Crew Dragon:
https://twitter.com/Astronut099/status/1119825093742530560 [twitter.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Sunday April 21 2019, @05:11PM
Interesting video: Happening that quick before there was any visible exhaust, it may well be that something delayed the ignition of the hypergolic propellants until a dangerous amount of them accumulated and they detonated. That was a common problem during the development of the early hypergolics.