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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, @06:13PM (2 children)
If I'm not mistaken, the test was for the SuperDraco thrusters. Maybe those got damaged by splashdown, but were they actually used during the mission?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 22 2019, @06:57AM (1 child)
They weren't. SpaceX originally planned to use the SuperDracos for landing, but switched to water landings because, not to put too fine a point on it, NASA likes water landings better, because that is what they did in the 1960s and NASA can't accept that there have been any improvements since then. So if the problem is attributable to salt water damage, then the blame goes to NASA.
Salt water would probably be one of the best case scenarios, since SpaceX isn't planning to reuse Dragon capsules on crewed flights anyway, but rather use only new ones for crew, and reused ones for cargo. So it might turn out not to actually matter much if that's the case.
But we don't really know what caused the problem yet. The SuperDracos are pretty well tested, but that doesn't mean that there's not some sort of design or manufacturing flaw.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 22 2019, @03:25PM
Yes, if this explosion can be attributed to the splashdown, that would be the best case scenario since NASA wants fresh Crew Dragons each time anyway. I don't think we'll be so lucky though. Good thing NASA bought another ride on the Soyuz.
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