SpaceX crew capsule escape test a success as crowds watch rocket explode

SpaceX has completed its last big test of its crew capsule before it launches astronauts for Nasa in the next few months.

The test launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida took place on Sunday, having been delayed a day by bad weather. No one was aboard the Dragon crew capsule, just two mannequins. The nine-minute flight ended with the capsule parachuting safely into the Atlantic after separating and speeding away from its exploding rocket.

“I’m super fired up,” SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk told reporters. “It’s just going to be wonderful to get astronauts back into orbit from American soil after almost a decade of not being able to do so. That’s just super exciting.”

Nasa astronauts have not launched from the US since the space shuttle program ended in 2011. Musk and Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine said the next Crew Dragon could launch with two astronauts as early as April.

In the test launch, the Falcon 9 rocket blasted off as normal before, a little more than a minute into its supersonic flight and 12 miles above the Atlantic, the Dragon crew capsule catapulted off the top. Powerful thrusters propelled it out of harm’s way as the rocket engines deliberately shut down and the booster tumbled out of control before exploding in a giant fireball.

The capsule reached an altitude of about 27 miles before parachuting into the ocean. Despite choppy seas and overcast skies, everything appeared to go well. Within minutes, a recovery ship was alongside the capsule.

SpaceX normally tries to recover its boosters to drive down launch costs, landing them upright on a floating platform or back at the launch site. This time the rocket, previously used in three launches, slammed in pieces into the sea.

Nasa’s commercial crew program manager, Kathy Lueders, said the launch abort test was “our last open milestone” before allowing SpaceX to launch astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken on a flight to the International Space Station. Their launch date will depend in part on whether Nasa decides to keep them at the orbiting lab for months or just for a week or two. A longer mission will require more training.

The astronauts watched Sunday’s flight from the firing room. Hurley said it was “pretty neat to see” the capsule aboard the recovery ship.

“We’ll see what the data show and go from there,” he said. “But it certainly is a confidence builder from the standpoint if you ever got into that situation, that Dragon can get us away from the booster quickly.”

In a dress rehearsal on Friday, Hurley and Behnken drove a white Tesla Model X from Kennedy Space Center’s crew quarters to the launch pad, their sleek white and black spacesuits matching the electric sports car with wing-like doors. Musk also runs Tesla.

Sunday’s launch brought together hundreds of SpaceX, Nasa and US air force employees while tourists and locals packed the visitor complex and nearby beaches to see the dramatic and fiery spectacle.

Nasa hired SpaceX and Boeing a decade ago to transport astronauts to and from the space station, for billions of dollars. Both companies struggled, forcing Nasa to spend hundreds of millions of dollars extra for rides on Russian rockets.

After completing a number of cargo deliveries for Nasa, SpaceX successfully flew an enhanced but unmanned crew capsule to the space station last March. It exploded a month later, during ground testing. The emergency escape thrusters – the kind used in Sunday’s test – had to be retooled. In all, SpaceX has tested its powerful Super Draco thrusters 700 times.

Last month, Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule ended up in the wrong orbit on its first test flight and had to skip the space station. The previous month, only two of the Starliner’s three parachutes deployed during a launch abort test. An investigation team is looking into why the Starliner’s automated timer was off by 11 hours during its December test flight.

The importance of launch escape was demonstrated in 2017 when two astronauts, an American and a Russian, were involved in a failed launch from Kazakhstan. They experienced up to seven times the force of gravity but walked away from the accident.

The SpaceX in-flight abort system, Musk said, should be gentler for the crew. The Dragon’s escape system should work, in principle, even if the capsule is still attached when the rocket erupts in a fireball. Musk said that could look like “something out of Star Wars”, with the capsule flying out of a fireball.

“Obviously we want to avoid doing that,“ he added, noting the Nasa personnel around him.