Crew Dragon to be Tested and Ready by End of First Quarter of 2020

Aerospace and Defense Review | Friday, October 18, 2019

Elon Musk owned SpaceX was given the task of building the next spaceship for NASA that would be made in America. However, the company failed to meet the deadline of 2017 due to multiple reasons. After numerous tests and failures, founder Elon Musk believes his company will be able to deliver the Crew Dragon in the mission-ready condition in 2020

FREMONT, CA: NASA's dependence on the Russian Soyuz Capsule may finally come to an end as SpaceX believes it is almost ready to launch the Crew Dragon Spacecraft which is set to carry the astronauts to space. The decommissioning of the Space Shuttle in 2011 marked the end of a period where NASA was independent in its space missions.

In 2014, the US space agency had awarded $2.6 billion to SpaceX and $4.2 billion to Boeing towards finishing their astronaut carrying space capsules. The capsules were named Crew Dragon by SpaceX and the CST-100 Starliner by Boeing. Elon Musk owned SpaceX was given the task of building the next spaceship for NASA that would be made in America. However, the company failed to meet the deadline of 2017 due to multiple reasons. After numerous tests and failures, founder Elon Musk believes his company will be able to deliver the Crew Dragon in the mission-ready condition in 2020.

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“We are getting very close, and we’re very confident that, in the first part of next year, we will be ready to launch American astronauts on American rockets,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. He added that the first quarter (January-March) of next year (2020) could be a realistic target for the Demo-2 mission by Elon Musk’s firm.

The test flight will be carrying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to and from the International Space Station (ISS) followed by operational, contracted missions to ISS. Bridenstine also stressed that the particular deadline would hold only when things go as per plan with the development of the Crew Dragon.

Earlier this year, there was a mishap at one of the tests of Crew Dragon where the Crew Dragon’s SuperDraco abort engines got fired, and the vehicle was destroyed. As a result, SpaceX has revised the abort propulsion system of Crew Dragon, and the company would start rigorous testing of the new design in the next few weeks. “We’re hopeful to have the first successful Mark 3 drop test within a week or two, and then there’ll be a steady cadence of tests thereafter. These two issues – the abort propulsion system and the parachutes, are the only things that put the deadline at risk. However, there may be other things that we discover,” said Elon Musk.

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