SpaceX finishes significant tests of its Crew Dragon parachutes
SpaceX has shown that its most recent Mark 3 Crew Dragon parachutes will work regardless of whether things don’t go very to plan. On Twitter, the organization flaunted a short video clip of a payload landing with just three of four parachutes deployed and said it has successfully tested the system 13 times in a row.
That is an entirely enormous achievement, as it beats a goal that CEO Elon Musk had set a month ago. “We certainly want to get … at least on the order of 10 successful tests in a row before, before launching astronauts,” he said. “So that seems like where the behavior of the parachutes is consistent, is across 10 successful tests.”
The parachutes presently appear to be generously unique from the ones SpaceX first tested. Rather than nylon on the straps, they currently use “Zylon” a more grounded polymer material created by Stanford University. The chutes likewise have a new stitching pattern to all the more equitably appropriate the loads.
In a meeting with NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, Musk said that Crew Dragon could be prepared for its first crewed “Demo-2” test flight in Q1 of 2020. Before that occurs, in any case, SpaceX still needs to perform static fire tests of the Crew Dragon abort engine. During the last such test in April, an abnormality caused an uncrewed capsule to detonate.
On the off chance that that goes to plan, SpaceX would then perform an in-flight abort test exhibiting that astronauts would have the option to escape alive in case of a blast or other launch issue. During that test, an uncrewed Crew Dragon capsule will launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket at Kennedy Space Center. Soon after liftoff, the capsule’s SuperDraco thrusters should impact it a safe good ways from the rocket.
On the off chance that such works (and that is a major “if”), NASA and SpaceX could begin running the vital Demo-2 tests to the international space station with the test-flight group on board. Those could occur as ahead of schedule as one year from now, Musk said in October.
