SpaceX successfully completes its key test of its human spacecraft Crew Dragon.
SpaceX has completed a key test of its new project, Crew Dragon which is a human spacecraft, today. The test was completed using the Falcon 9 rocket without any actual crew on board. The launch was delayed by around 2.5 hours. The Crew Dragon was attached to the Falcon 9.
Here’s how it looked:
The Crew Dragon freed itself from the Falcon 9 rocket after about 1 minute 30 seconds post the launch. The Falcon 9 immideatly exploded after the In-Flight Abort (IAF). As intended the Dragon quickly fired up its 8 Super Draco engines to move away from the Falcon 9 explosion, which in an actual scenario would ensure the saftey of the astronauts inside the shuttle. The Crew Dragons’s powerful engines can propel it half a mile in just 7.5 seconds exerting upto 4Gs i.e 4 times earth’s gravity, on the astronauts.
Post the movement away from the Falcon 9, the Crew Dragon sucessfully deployed its parachutes for a safe landing and decended on the Atlatic Ocean. The crew then recovered the capsuel for further examination post landing. In a real scenario, an elite airforce resuce team would be on stand-by and would quickly proceed to resuce once the actual shuttle with the astronauts, lands. The recovery took around an hour or so to retrive the shuttle.
The Falcon 9 used for this test had already done 3 previous missions and was the first booster produced as a part of SpaceX’s run of human-rated variants of the Falcon 9 design. All went to plan as the Falcon 9 broke away once the Crew Dragon ejected, with no onboard fuel generation which is quite impressive.
So, this would be the first time Space X has demonstrated that its Crew Dragon system is almost ready for human flight. It did perform a sucessful pad abort back in 2015, which show that it could cancel the launch before the actual liftoff, in a safe way. The Super Dracos have also impressed just like last year November when they were tested. That test saw Crew Dragon launch atop a Falcon 9, deploy to orbit, rendez-vous and dock with the International Space Station(ISS) all on its own and then return to earth, a major fete in itself. This means the Crew Dragon has sucessfully proved that it can take with it, humans into space and sucessfully return back, a means for commerical use. Manned missions should take place later on in this year. We are eagerly waiting!
The successful launch test of the Crew Dragon is a big milestone for SpaceX as now, they are closer to achieving their aim of commercially viable spacecrafts.
How will commercial spacecrafts change our lives? What do you reckon? Leave a reply!
The Orange Bulb 