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Crew Dragon suffers “anomaly”

During a test of the crew mission-abort systems today, the Crew Dragon capsule apparently had a major mishap. It is unclear at this time how much damage occurred, but much orange smoke was seen.

Commenter billybeer at Ars Technica says:

Color of the smoke in those photos is indicative of the dinitrogen tetroxide. Current rumor mill claims the capsule went kaboom – obviously unconfirmed at the moment.

Clearly it is too early to say how much this affects the SpaceX crewed flight intended for later this year. As reported in Florida Today:

“On April 20, 2019, an anomaly occurred at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during the Dragon 2 static test fire,” Wing Spokesman Jim Williams told FLORIDA TODAY. “The anomaly was contained and there were no injuries.”

FLORIDA TODAY Photographer Craig Bailey, covering a surf fest in Cocoa Beach, captured an image of orange plumes rising from SpaceX facilities at the Cape around 3:30 p.m. Unconfirmed reports indicated the capsule was nearly destroyed.

“Earlier today, SpaceX conducted a series of engine tests on a Crew Dragon test vehicle on our test stand at Landing Zone 1 in Cape Canaveral, Florida,” SpaceX said in a statement. “The initial tests completed successfully but the final test resulted in an anomaly on the test stand.”

From the article in Ars Technica:

It is not immediately clear how significantly this incident will affect SpaceX as it works toward Dragon’s first crewed mission, which will carry astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station. Previously, sources have said that flight could occur by about October under ideal conditions. If the problems were serious, Saturday’s accident may substantially delay this schedule—although in the past SpaceX has shown a propensity to rapidly diagnose failures and return to flight quickly, with just 4.5 months of downtime after a rocket failure in September, 2016.

SpaceX has been developing SuperDraco thrusters for the better part of a decade to enable human flights on board Dragon. There are four “pods” of two engines each situated around the Dragon capsule, and each SuperDraco engine has a thrust of 16,000 pounds. Testing of the SuperDracos began in early 2012, using various thrust cycles on a test stand at SpaceX’s rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas.

The engines burn hypergolic propellants — monomethylhydrazine, as a fuel, and nitrogen tetroxide as an oxidizer. These are fairly toxic compounds, but unlike other “cleaner” rocket fuels, they are more easily storable both on the ground and in space.

For reference, here is a closeup of the SuperDraco thruster assembly. We hope that the cause of this “anomaly” is found quickly, and disposed of with the kind of dispatch SpaceX is famous for.

More information on this event can be found at NASASpaceFlight(dot)com, Spaceflight Now, and SpaceNews.

UPDATE 4/20/19 from Parabolic Arc today:

5:53 pm PDT: Source at the Cape says the Crew Dragon that flew to ISS last month was destroyed in an explosion. In-flight abort and flight test to ISS scheduled for June and July, respectively, have been postponed indefinitely.

UPDATE 4/22/19: There is now a video available of the explosion:

3 replies on “Crew Dragon suffers “anomaly””

Exactly. That’s one of the reasons I like SpaceX. We have very little knowledge, for example, of how Blue Origin is doing. Which reminds me, I have to finish the post on them. Always something to do.

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