SpaceX completes successful test of crew escape
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX on Wednesday morning completed an apparently successful test of a system that would allow astronauts in its Dragon capsule to escape a launch pad emergency.
At 9 a.m., a prototype Dragon carrying only a test dummy fired eight engines to rocket from a stand on Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station with 120,000 pounds of thrust.
The capsule rose with a trail of smoke, then coasted up to about 5,000 feet. There it jettisoned its "trunk" and deployed two drogue parachutes and then three main parachutes to control its descent to a splashdown about a mile off shore.
The entire "pad abort" test lasted less than two minutes.
It was the first of two tests SpaceX has scheduled to prove the Dragon spacecraft could safely move astronauts away from the most dangerous situations during a launch.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called Wednesday's Dragon pad abort test from Cape Canaveral "a great outcome."
Data from the test remains to be analyzed, but Musk said all eight of the Dragon's SuperDraco engines fired properly.
"Had there been people on board, they would have been in great shape," Musk said during a teleconference Wednesday. "So I think it was very exciting."
An "in-flight abort" test later this year will launch the same test capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The Dragon will fire its thrusters at the moment of maximum aerodynamic pressure.
Wednesday's test was a milestone under NASA's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability contract, making SpaceX eligible for a $30 million payment.
That development contract was a precursor to the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract worth up to $2.6 billion that NASA awarded to SpaceX last fall. Boeing's CST-100 capsule also won a contract.
"I think this bodes quite well for the future of the program," Musk said. "I don't want to jinx it, but certainly this is really quite a good indication for the future of Dragon."
Musk thinks SpaceX could be ready to launch astronauts from the Space Coast to the International Space Station within two years.