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WASHINGTON – Members of an independent security committee have said that on April 25, it will take time to determine what happened during a SpaceX Crew Dragon test incident there is several days, and its impact on the overall commercial crew program remains uncertain.
At a meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Committee (ASAP) at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, members gave some new details about the anomaly when testing the SuperDraco thrusters on the Crew spacecraft Dragon on a test site at Cape Canaveral Air Force. Station. This incident enveloped the vehicle in a fireball and created a plume of smoke visible away from the site.
Patricia Sanders, chair of the committee, confirmed that the anomaly occurred during a static fire test of SuperDraco thrusters used in the spacecraft launch abandonment system. These propellers were tested before a flight drop test scheduled for this summer.
The April 20 test, she said, aimed to demonstrate the performance of the integrated SuperDraco system, after testing 12 smaller Draco thrusters. "The firing of eight SuperDracos resulted in an anomaly," she said.
NASA and SpaceX began implementing crash plans after the accident, and she noted that the anomaly had caused no injuries. SpaceX is conducting the investigation with what she termed "active participation in NASA". The initial job is to gather all the evidence on the test site and create an incident schedule.
"The investigation will take time before the root cause analysis is complete and will determine the impact on Demo-2 and the flight abandonment test," she said. declared. Demo-2 is a crew test flight, with two NASA astronauts on board, scheduled to take place at the earliest in July.
Panel members gave little detail about the incident and its impact on the overall commercial crew program. "We know that the recent SpaceX disaster is attracting a lot of attention. We are patient and allow teams to investigate, "said Sandra Magnus, ASAP member.
The test was conducted approximately six weeks after the return of the Demo-1 capsule from an unprepared test flight to the International Space Station. Although this test flight went well, Magnus stated that it was clear that even before the flight, SpaceX still had a lot of work to do before it could move to Demo-2, which was not a good place to go. it has associated with an iterative or "spiraling" development approach to society. had adopted.
"Before the launch of Demo-1, because of this spiral development approach adopted by the company, NASA and SpaceX have identified configuration changes and subsequent qualification work that should be completed before Demo-2 is completed. possible, "she said.
"Despite the recent incident, there is still a lot of work to be done between Demo-1 and a crew flight," she continued. "It is still too early to speculate on the changes in this corpus based on recent events."
Boeing has taken a different, more traditional development approach, which aims to make the design of its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle more mature before any test flight. A test flight not equipped with the Space Shuttle is now scheduled for early August and a crew test flight before the end of the year.
The company, she said, has made progress on a number of technical issues, but there is still work to be done. "NASA and the Boeing team are facing the submission and analysis of the required data from the final certification and verification processes," she said.
Magnus cautioned against schedule constraints on the program and said that NASA had acted appropriately by guaranteeing alternative plans to maintain access to the ISS until the end of the year. 2020. The commission, she said, supported the position of NASA's commercial crew program until the program received the required data "to ensure that vehicles operate with safety margins. sufficient. "We will continue to emphasize this as work moves forward on both programs."
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