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takyon writes:

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.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for AnonymousLuser:

Investigation into Crew Dragon incident continues - SpaceNews.com

WASHINGTON — More than a month after a Crew Dragon spacecraft was destroyed in a test of its propulsion system, NASA and SpaceX investigators are still working to determine the cause of the accident and its implications for upcoming test flights.

In a May 28 presentation to the NASA Advisory Council's human exploration and operations committee, Kathy Lueders, manager of the commercial crew program at NASA, offered few updates on the progress of the investigation into the April 20 incident at a SpaceX pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

In that incident, SpaceX was testing both the Draco thrusters and larger SuperDraco abort thrusters in preparation for an in-flight abort test of the capsule that, at the time, was scheduled for the end of June. "An anomaly occurred during activation of the SuperDraco system," she said, but offered no details on what caused that anomaly.

[...] With the investigation ongoing, Lueders said the dates of both the in-flight abort test and the Demo-2 mission are under review. Assembly of the Demo-2 capsule continues, she said, although she said workers are keeping open the vehicle's propulsion system in case they need to make modifications as a result of the investigation. "They're making progress in a lot of the other areas while trying to keep, most particularly in the prop area, access to the systems that may need to be modified," she said.

She didn't give an indication of when that investigation will be completed. "You don't push your anomaly investigation team too quick," she said, stressing the importance for them to be "methodical" while working through all parts of the fault tree of potential causes.

Original Submission

takyon and martyb write:

SpaceX and NASA detail cause of Dragon test failure, crewed flight this year looks 'increasingly difficult'

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.]

Original Submission

Elon Musk and NASA Chief Get on Same Page, Vow to Complete Crew Dragon

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Elon Musk and NASA chief get on same page, vow to complete Crew Dragon

[...] During the presentation, both Bridenstine and Musk provided information about the schedule for the first Crew Dragon mission that will send astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken into orbit. If all goes well, Bridenstine said, the mission could happen during the first quarter of 2020.

Two main technical issues remain to be resolved: parachutes and the in-flight abort system. Regarding parachutes, Musk said the company is going to a more advanced parachute, dubbed Mark 3, that has more durable Zylon lines connecting to the parachute canopy. Zylon is stronger than Kevlar and about three times stronger than the previously used nylon lines. SpaceX has an aggressive test program during which it hopes to complete 10 tests of the new parachutes between now and the end of 2019. If all of those tests show good performance, there may be enough data to put to rest concerns about parachute performance when Dragon re-enters Earth's atmosphere.

The other issue is the Super Draco thruster system used during an abort. This thruster experienced a catastrophic failure during an April test, but since then SpaceX and NASA believe they have identified the problem and implemented a fix. A ground-based test of this system should occur within a couple of weeks, Musk said. That will be followed by an in-flight abort test in late November or early December.

After this point, if all the testing goes well, engineers from both SpaceX and NASA will review the data to ensure that every step to improve safety of the vehicle has been taken.

"Space is hard, obviously," Musk said. "Very few countries have created an orbital vehicle. I guess just three. This is a very hard thing. There are a lot of people working super hard at SpaceX and NASA and our suppliers. They're doing their best."

Anonymous Coward in Space writes:

https://spacenews.com/boeing-performs-starliner-pad-abort-test/

WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing said a pad abort test of the CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle Nov. 4 was a success despite the failure of one of the capsule's three parachutes to properly deploy.

The Starliner lifted off from a test stand at Launch Complex 32 at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico at approximately 9:15 a.m. Eastern time. The spacecraft's launch abort engines fired for five seconds, and a separate set of orbital maneuvering thrusters for 10 seconds, accelerating the spacecraft to more than 1,000 kilometers per hour to simulate escaping a malfunctioning rocket on the launch pad.

The capsule soared to a planned peak altitude of about 1,350 meters before jettisoning its service module and heat shield, then deploying its parachutes. The capsule, cushioned by airbags, landed about 90 seconds after liftoff.

...

"We did have a deployment anomaly, not a parachute failure," Boeing said in a post-launch statement. "It's too early to determine why all three main parachutes did not deploy, however, having two of three deploy successfully is acceptable for the test parameters and crew safety." The company added that, at the present time, it doesn't expect the issue to delay the Orbital Flight Test.

...

SpaceX, which conducted a pad abort test of its Crew Dragon spacecraft in May 2015, is preparing for an in-flight abort test in December. On that test, a Crew Dragon spacecraft will fire its SuperDraco thrusters to escape a Falcon 9 nearly 90 seconds after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center, around the time of maximum dynamic pressure on the spacecraft. SpaceX is scheduled to perform a static fire of those thrusters as soon as Nov. 6 in preparation for that flight.

Boeing will not perform its own in-flight abort test, concluding that data from the pad abort, along with modeling of flight conditions, will be sufficient, an approach NASA approved.

Boeing and NASA are declaring the test a success because the crew and capsule would have been perfectly safe had this happened under real conditions. The capsule is designed to be able to land even following a failure of one of the parachutes. However, the reason that redundancies exist is because there are often unforeseen issues outside of test conditions. Should a test that would result in the crew living, yet one that also fails to function nominally be considered a success? If so, is this success enough to provide sufficient confidence in Boeing's ability to move forward without even carrying out an in-flight abort, which is substantially more challenging than a pad abort?

Original Submission