[ad_1]
It's been well over a week since the first news about a serious dysfunction of SpaceX's much-awaited capsule, Crew Dragon, was announced. The probe was self-destroyed during testing and a blurry video showing that the test failure ended in an explosion attracted a lot of attention. SpaceX chose to remain largely silent on the subject, describing it as an "anomaly" and staying that way.
When you build machines designed to take astronauts into space, and that one of these machines explodes, people will want as much information as possible, and SpaceX has just broken its silence to offer some more details about what could have gone wrong. .
As Space Flight Now Hans Koenigsmann of SpaceX, Vice President of Flight Construction and Reliability, provided additional information at a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center.
"On the test stand, we put Dragon on, as planned," said Koenigsmann. "We did tests with Draco thrusters, the smallest thrusters on the Dragon cargo. We shot them in two sets, each for five seconds, and it went very well. And just before we wanted to fire the SuperDraco, there was an anomaly and the vehicle was destroyed. There was no injury. SpaceX had taken all necessary security measures before this test, as we always do. "
SpaceX SuperDraco rockets are part of the Crew Dragon's launch escape system, which is designed to push the crew capsule away from the rocket if a launch stop is triggered during the flight. It is a potentially vital system that absolutely must work flawlessly for NASA to trust the equipment to transport its astronauts. In this case, it seems to have caused the total destruction of the spacecraft itself.
It sounds pretty scary, but as NASA's Jim Bridenstine summed it up in the hours following the failure: "That's why we test." NASA will not let its explorers aboard the Crew Dragon as long as its Security was not assured, but SpaceX proved to be quite capable of correcting the deficiencies, so we did not expect this "anomaly" to be more than a small bump on the road.
Source of image: NASA
[ad_2]
Source link