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.
Related Stories
SpaceX held a press conference on Monday to discuss the results of a months-long investigation conducted by itself and NASA into an anomaly that took place during a static fire test in April. The investigation found that the "anomaly" that occurred during the test was the result of oxidizer mixing with the helium component of the SuperDraco rocket engine propellant system at very high pressure.
On April 20, SpaceX held an abort engine test for a prototype of its Crew Dragon vehicle (which had been flown previously for the uncrewed ISS mission). Crew Dragon is designed to be the first crew-carrying SpaceX spacecraft, and is undergoing a number of tests to prove to NASA its flight-readiness. After the first few tests proved successful, the test encountered a failure that was instantly visible, with an unexpected explosion that produced a plume of fire visible for miles around the testing site at its Landing Zone 1 facility in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Also at Ars Technica and Teslarati.
See also:
SpaceX's response to Crew Dragon explosion unfairly maligned by head of NASA
Update: In-Flight Abort Static Fire Test Anomaly Investigation
Previously: Reuters: Boeing Starliner Flights to the ISS Delayed by at Least Another 3 Months
SpaceX Crew Dragon Suffers "Anomaly" During Static Fire Test
Investigation Into Crew Dragon Incident Continues
[Ed Note - The article at Teslarati has a good description of the suspected failure.]
SpaceX fires up redesigned Crew Dragon as NASA reveals SuperDraco thruster "flaps"
On November 13th, SpaceX revealed that a planned static fire test of a Crew Dragon's powerful abort thrusters was completed without issue, a strong sign that the company has successfully redesigned the spacecraft to prevent a catastrophic April 2019 explosion from reoccurring.
Pending a far more extensive analysis, Wednesday's static fire should leave SpaceX on track to perform Crew Dragon's next major flight test before the end of 2019.
[...] Each capable of producing several dozen pounds of thrust, both Crew and Cargo Dragon use Draco thrusters to orient themselves in orbit, rendezvous with the International Space Station, and lower their orbits to reenter Earth's atmosphere. Crew Dragon's Draco thrusters are also designed to control its attitude during abort scenarios, stabilizing and flipping the spacecraft to prevent a loss of control and ensure proper orientation during emergency parachute deployment. The Draco firings during Crew Dragon's November 13th static fire were meant to simulate that additional use-case.
Aside from verifying that SpaceX has successfully redesigned Crew Dragon to mitigate the failure mode that caused capsule C201's catastrophic explosion in April 2019, the Draco static fires specifically mirrored the burns Crew Dragon C205 will need to perform to successfully complete its In-Flight Abort (IFA) test. As noted by NASA and SpaceX, with the static fire complete, both teams will now comb through the data produced, inspect Crew Dragon to verify its health and the performance of its redesigned high-flow pressurization system, and perform any necessary refurbishment.
NASA's post on Crew Dragon's static fire revealed another thoroughly intriguing detail: the SpaceX spacecraft's SuperDraco thrusters apparently have flaps! A bit of retroactive speculation suggests that SuperDracos are closed out with plugs of some sort to create a seal against the environment before Crew Dragon is rolled out to the launch pad. Perhaps, in the event of a SuperDraco ignition, SpaceX included actuating flaps as a method of resealing those thrusters prior to splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.
Related: SpaceX Crew Dragon Suffers "Anomaly" During Static Fire Test
Investigation Into Crew Dragon Incident Continues
SpaceX and NASA Investigation Identifies Cause of Crew Dragon Explosion
NASA and SpaceX Hope for Manned Mission to ISS in Early 2020
Boeing Performs Starliner Pad Abort Test. Declares Success Though 1 of 3 Parachutes Fails to Deploy.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Sunday April 21 2019, @04:43PM (4 children)
Certainly a lot better to find the problem now than with a crew on board during an actual abort.
As much as I want to see Crew Dragon operational, I can wait till it's ready.
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21 2019, @04:57PM (1 child)
Sure, better to have the failure now than during operation. But blowing up this close to the launch date causes a big loss in conference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21 2019, @04:59PM
Confidence
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Sunday April 21 2019, @06:03PM (3 children)
If there's any good news, it's that TFA says this is most likely the CD that successfully docked with the ISS. This is not confirmed, but it would be good news because the failure might be attributed to damage caused by reentry/splashdown. If so, a brand new CD wouldn't have this problem, and they would just need to find out what's preventing them from being *reusable* as opposed to them not be usable at all. That's still a hard thing, but not as bad as it failing right off the lot.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(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?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(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.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21 2019, @06:24PM (1 child)
It may not be PC to point it out, but there's a high correlation between Moslems and things like the anomalies at Notre Dame last week or Sri Lanka today.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21 2019, @09:42PM
Is it a coincidence that Mohamed's uncle was named Elon?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 22 2019, @04:05PM
Not much in the way of the new details, but here you go:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/heres-what-we-know-and-what-we-dont-about-the-crew-dragon-accident/ [arstechnica.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Coward, Anonymous on Monday April 22 2019, @09:27PM
How much does the thing have to move before a test is no longer considered "static"?