Spaceflight Now by Stephen Clark 1/23/2020
Data from the Jan. 19 in-flight launch escape demonstration of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft indicate the performance of the capsule’s SuperDraco abort engines was “flawless†as the thrusters boosted the ship away from the top of a Falcon 9 rocket with a peak acceleration of about 3.3Gs, officials said Thursday.
The Jan. 19 test demonstrated the Crew Dragon’s ability to safely carry astronauts away from a launch emergency, such as a rocket failure, and return the crew to a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.
For its final full-scale test before astronauts ride it into space, the Crew Dragon spacecraft lifted off at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT) on Jan. 19 from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A Falcon 9 rocket carried the capsule aloft — just as it would on a crewed mission — for the first 85 seconds of the mission.
With the Crew Dragon in-flight escape test complete, engineers will analyze additional data over the coming weeks to verify everything functioned as designed. Assuming no showstoppers, the abort demonstration was the final planned test flight of a full-scale Dragon capsule before NASA clears the commercial crew ferry ship to carry astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station.
At least two more drop tests to test the Crew Dragon’s parachutes are planned beginning in mid-February.
NASA and SpaceX said after the Jan. 19 abort test that the first Crew Dragon launch with astronauts could occur in the second quarter of this year, between the beginning of April and the end of June.
More:
https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/01/23/spacex-releases-preliminary-results-from-crew-dragon-abort-test/
