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SpaceX says it discovered the cause of the explosion of one of its spacecraft during a ground test conducted in April. One valve accidentally leaked part of the vehicle thruster, causing a chain reaction that caused the spacecraft to burst. Now that the cause has been identified, SpaceX says it is replacing these parts in all future versions of the vehicle to ensure that this explosive leak will not happen again.
The spacecraft that SpaceX lost was a test version of the company's Crew Dragon, a capsule built to allow NASA to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station. This capsule was the first SpaceX SpaceX Crew to be launched in space. In March, the vehicle – unmanned – successfully docked at the ISS and then returned to Earth during a flawless test mission. But during routine tests on the vehicle on April 20, the capsule was violently separated and spewed orange gas into the sky.
SpaceX immediately formed an investigation team after the accident to determine the cause of the explosion. Since then, the company collaborates with NASA. But until six weeks ago, SpaceX still had not specified the exact cause. With the discovery of the leak, the company now claims that the survey is about 80% complete. "It's hard to say … how much time we need to solve this problem," said Hans Koenigsman, vice president of building and flight systems reliability at SpaceX, during a conference Press. "But you want to make sure that the capsule – all – you want to make sure we find all the right corrective actions."
The company believes the problem comes from the Crew Dragon emergency abandonment system, which consists of a series of small thrusters built into the capsule. If all goes well during a mission, these tiny thrusters are never really intended for use. But if there is some kind of failure during a future launch, the thrusters can ignite and carry the Dragon Crew to the shelter of a rocket in it. decomposition.
SpaceX indicates that a leaking valve caused the passage of the thruster needed to pass these thrusters into another system – one of the very high pressure. When this contamination occurred, high forces melted the liquid, causing the failure of valuable components and resulting in the final loss of the capsule.
Koenigsman stated that this contamination was not anticipated at all, although the type of leaking valve has internal leakage problems. In the end, he acknowledged that, to some extent, it was a design problem. "It's something the components should not have done," Koenigsman said. "But at the same time, we learned a very valuable lesson on an upcoming project that makes the Crew Dragon a safer vehicle."
SpaceX will replace all these types of valves with another component called rupture disc, which is supposed to be much more reliable, according to Koenigsman. SpaceX claims to have several crew dragons at various stages of production at the company's headquarters in California. However, we do not know when the crew dragon will fly again. Before the explosion, SpaceX had planned to fly its first astronauts aboard the vehicle by the end of summer. It seems more and more likely that SpaceX will not steal people until the beginning of next year – although Koenigsman does not rule out a flight for 2019. "I really want it to be secure," he said. declared. "So, at the end of the year, I do not think it's impossible, but it's getting harder and harder."
However, a representative of NASA said that she was grateful for this failure, especially since it occurred on the ground rather than during a flight. "We had the ability to find a problem with the equipment and find it and evaluate the equipment," said Kathy Lueders, head of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, at the press conference. "It was therefore a huge gift for us.
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