Cape Canaveral: Elon Musk’s SpaceX simulated a successful emergency landing yesterday in a dramatic test of a crucial abort system on an unmanned astronaut capsule, a big step its mission to fly Nasa astronauts for the first time as soon as this spring.
A Crew Dragon astronaut capsule launched at 10.30am and softly splashed down about 32km off the coast of Cape Canaveral in Florida about eight minutes later, after ejecting itself from a rocket that cut off its engines 19km above the ocean to mimic a launch failure.
Crew Dragon detached from the Falcon 9 rocket at “more than double the speed of sound,” Musk said, at 40km above the Atlantic Ocean -- roughly twice the altitude of a commercial jetliner.
“It is a picture perfect mission. It went as well as one can possibly expect,” Musk said at a Press conference.
Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine also described the test as a success.
The first mission with humans aboard, which will be the final test mission before Nasa’s commercial crew programme becomes operational, is scheduled for the second quarter of this year, after the spacecraft is completed no later than March, Musk said.
In what was a key trial ahead of carrying humans, SpaceX also tested its rescue teams’ response after splash down. They scrambled toward Crew Dragon with the US Air Force’s Detachment 3 emergency rescue teams in tow – a vital part of the test to practise a rescue mission to retrieve astronauts from the capsule.
Crew Dragon, an acorn-shaped pod that can seat seven astronauts, fired on-board thrusters to detach itself from the rocket less than two minutes after liftoff, simulating an emergency abort scenario to prove it can return astronauts to safety. Each stage of the test prompted loud cheers from SpaceX crew members watching the footage from back on land.
The test is crucial to qualify the capsule to fly humans to the International Space Station, something Nasa expects to come as soon as mid-2020. It follows years of development and delays as the US has sought to revive its human spaceflight programme through private partnerships.