When talking about Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technology Corporation, or SpaceX in short, everyone knows about the successful Crew Dragon vehicle which will soon launch the US astronauts to the International Space Station.
On March 2, 2019, SpaceX launched the reusable Crew Dragon on top of the Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket on its uncrewed Demo Mission 1 (DM-1) to the International Space Station. The mission was a success when the world sees Crew Dragon docked to the International Space Station for the first time and followed by splashdown at the Atlantic Ocean on March 8, 2019. But before Crew Dragon is certified by NASA to send astronauts to the International Space Station, a series of in-flight launch abort test is to be done to make sure that Crew Dragon is capable of escaping Falcon 9 with the astronauts in it during flight anomaly.
During an abort engine test on a Crew Dragon test vehicle at Cape Canaveral on Saturday, a reddish-orange plume was seen visible in the sky for miles around. A setback for SpaceX and NASA as teams are preparing the capsule for its first mission with astronauts.
SpaceX has confirmed the accident, first reported by Florida Today, in a statement Saturday evening and no injuries were reported.
"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," a company spokesperson said. "The initial tests completed successfully but the final test resulted in an anomaly on the test stand."
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted that the space agency was notified of the accident.
"The NASA and SpaceX teams are assessing the anomaly that occured today during a part of the Dragon Super Draco Static Fire Test at SpaceX Landing Zone 1 in Florida," Bridenstine said in a written statement. "This is why we test. We will learn, make the necessary adjustment and safely move forward with our Commercial Crew Program."
The reddish-orange plumes are usually resulted with burning or leaking of toxic hypergolic propellants. The Crew Dragon's thrusters consume hypergolic hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants, which chemically ignite when mixed together. The Crew Dragon's Draco thrusters are used for in-orbit manuevers, while the eight larger Super Draco thrusters that are packaged into four pairs of 3D printed propulsion module are used for aborts during a launch emergency. They are designed to produce of up to 16,000 pounds of thrust and with the ability to restart multiple times to push the Crew Dragon spacecraft away from a failing rocket during launch.
SpaceX first Crew Dragon manned mission with NASA's veteran astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are assigned to the Demo-2 mission, which was planned to use a new spacecraft. Demo-2 was scheduled no earlier than July 25. NASA said earlier this month that it would reevaluate the target launch date for the Demo-2 mission on the next few weeks, and sources recently suggested that before the Saturday's accident, the Demo-2 launch was likely to be rescheduled for late September or early October this year.
Once the commercial crew spacecraft complete their test programs, NASA plans to rotate a four-person crew to and from the International Space Station, and officially ending the agency's reliance on the Russian Soyuz ferry ships. Soyuz capsules have carried all NASA astronauts into orbit since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011. Another spacecraft which is selected by NASA for the Commercial Crew Program is the Boeing CST-100 Starliner, which is scheduled for its first uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station this August.