- NASA appears to indicate that its planned launch of a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station is still on track for a launch by the end of May.
- An issue during testing of the Crew Dragon parachute design resulted in the destruction of the test hardware, but SpaceX maintains that the problem was not related to the parachutes.
- The launch will see a pair of NASA astronauts fly aboard SpaceX hardware for the first time ever.
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SpaceX’s upcoming test flight of its Crew Dragon spacecraft will be the first-ever crewed mission using the company’s hardware. It’s a very big deal for both SpaceX and NASA, which recruited SpaceX as part of its Commercial Crew program alongside competitor Boeing. Recently, NASA suggested that it would be ready to launch the first two astronauts on a Crew Dragon ship as early as May, but a recent parachute test threw that timeline into jeopardy.
As was reported yesterday, the test didn’t exactly go as either SpaceX or NASA would have liked. While hauling a dummy object into the air to test the Crew Dragon parachute system that had been installed on it, the helicopter being used for the test became unstable and the object had to be released. It was destroyed on impact with the ground, but nobody was harmed.
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SpaceX parachute snafu won’t delay Crew Dragon launch originally appeared on BGR.com on Fri, 27 Mar 2020 at 23:14:41 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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