The test demonstrated the spacecraft’s ability to get away from trouble in a hurry, powered by engines within the capsule that shot the Dragon 5,000 feet from the launch pad in seconds.
“With this test, if all goes well, we’ll be one step closer to flying again,” NASA commentator Mike Curie said in advance, referring to the fact that American rockets have not taken astronauts into space since the space shuttle program ended in 2011.
A little more than a minute later it splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean about a mile off the coast. Along the way, the capsule jettisoned its trunk stage, which fell into the ocean.
The test appeared to closely follow the outline SpaceX had proposed, though there was no immediate word about whether all went as planned.
In a press advisory issued Monday, SpaceX noted that the odds of “issues” was high, because it was the first test of the new system. “Fortunately, the test doesn’t need to be perfect to be valuable — our primary objective is to capture as much data as possible as the data captured here will be key to preparing Crew Dragon for its first human missions in 2017,” the advisory noted.
SpaceX is under contract with NASA to start ferrying astronauts in Dragon capsules to and from the International Space Station. While the contract calls for that service to begin as early as 2017, NASA budget restrictions make 2018 a more likely debut.
The emergency abort system showed off new technology.
The Dragon crew capsule is outfitted with eight of SpaceX’s Superdraco engines, set in pairs on four sides, aimed to fire out of the sidewalls of the spacecraft. Together they can provide 120,000 pounds of thrust in less than a second, more than the original NASA Atlas and Redstone rockets that lifted Mercury spacecraft into orbit in the early 1960s.
The engines have multiple purposes in SpaceX’s long-term plans. The most important — and objective of Wednesday’s test — is to provide a new way to rescue astronauts if there is a crisis on the launch pad, or during launch, or during the rocket’s ascent into orbit.
Unlike the old rescue systems included on Mercury and Apollo missions, the engines are not mounted on a tower appendage and are never jettisoned, so they are always available.
The engines also can be fired and refired multiple times, so that astronauts may use them for maneuvering in space.
Finally, SpaceX plans to use them one day for powered landings of the Dragon spacecraft on land, either on Earth or another body in space.
SpaceX crews will recover the Dragon and take it back to the company’s facilities in Texas for evaluation. There is an astronaut dummy on board.
©2015 The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
