Crew Dragon Parachute Landing Crash Test

It turns out that in April 2019, in addition to the explosion during the ground test of the Crew Dragon emergency rescue system, there was at least one more emergency situation that arose when testing landing parachutes.

Bill Gerstenmeier, head of NASA's manned programs, said that the
April tests of the Crew Dragon manned spacecraft parachute system were not completely correct.

In normal mode, the Crew Dragon ship must land on the water surface using four parachutes.

The first launch of Crew Dragon into space took place on March 2, 2019, as part of the DM-1 mission, it successfully completed its flight to the ISS without a crew, docked in fully automatic mode and returned to Earth.



However, on April 20, the same capsule exploded during a fire test of the engines of the emergency rescue system. The causes of the accident have not yet been named, nothing is known about how this will affect the timing of the first manned flight, which was previously planned for the period after July 25, 2019.

Explosion publication on ground test of the Crew Dragon emergency rescue system .

Now it became known about another accident when testing the systems of the ship Crew Dragon.

Bill Gerstenmeier, head of NASA's manned programs, said the parachute system was unsuccessfully tested at a hearing at the US parliamentary space subcommittee .

Witness: Mr. William H. Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator, Human Exploration and Operations, National Aeronautics and Space Administration.



1:34:00 - this is the time when there was a story about testing and failure:


According to Gerstemayer, tests of the Crew Dragon ship's parachute system took place on dry Lake Delamar in Nevada.

The capsule was dropped from a great height, after which the landing parachute system was activated.

Previously, several dozen tests of this system were performed, all of them basically completed normally.

During one of the tests, the ability of the Crew Dragon's parachute system to ensure a safe landing in case of failure of one of the four parachutes was tested.

Checked the performance of the landing system in case of emergency on board.

One of the four parachutes of the Crew Dragon landing system was intentionally disabled before the test, the other three were to ensure a safe landing, and the test capsule should not be damaged.

Unfortunately, an accident occurred while performing this test, the three remaining parachutes did not work as they should, and the test capsule was damaged when it hit the ground.

According to Gerstenmeier, it is not yet clear why this accident occurred, whether there was a violation of the capsule separation procedure itself when dropped from a height, problems with the construction of parachutes, or the system worked abnormally for other reasons.

Now, NASA and SpaceX experts are investigating the causes of this accident.

How the parachute system of the Crew Dragon ship works is shown below in the photo and video:



















Video recording of testing the Crew Dragon manned spacecraft parachute system in 2018: