NASA calls for patience while SpaceX investigates the dragon explosion of the crew

SpaceX and NASA are currently investigating the cause of an anomaly that would have caused an engine failure of the Dragon Crew capsule, designed to transport humans between Earth and the International Space Station. The incident occurred April 20 but did not hurt.

According to a SpaceX spokesperson, the Crew Dragon capsule suffered an "anomaly" during its ground tests. The anomaly caused a serious failure of the Dragon Crew and may have resulted in the loss of the probe but the details remain meager. After the incident, orange smoke was seen over the test area in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and an unverified video of the vehicle circulated on Twitter, showing an explosive explosion. The video has since been deleted.

The spaceship completed a historic unarmed trip to the ISS in March and was undergoing a series of tests on his SuperDracos, a suite of eight rocket engines designed to drop him from a launcher in case of emergency. Patricia Sanders, head of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Committee (ASAP), said Thursday that the firing of the smaller Draco engines had paid off, but that the firing of the eight SuperDracos was behind the # 39; anomaly.

"SpaceX is conducting the investigation with the active participation of NASA," Sanders noted at the meeting. "The survey will take time before the analysis of the root cause is over."

The former astronaut and current ASAP member, Sandra Magnus, understands that this incident is attracting a lot of interest, but has called for patience. The investigation is currently collecting data and Magnus made it clear that there would be no crewed missions until the commercial crew program would have received the data. which he needs".

NASA and SpaceX planned to launch the Crew Dragon on a Falcon 9 recall in June of this year to test its in-flight abandonment capabilities – which use SuperDraco engines – and then prepare to launch two NASA astronauts during of the first crewed demonstration in July. Although not yet officially excluded, NASA has recently withdrawn the dates it was targeting from its launch schedule.

"It is still too early to speculate on how this corpus will change based on recent events," said Magnus.