[ad_1]
Another crew of four astronauts, Crew-2, leapt safely into the Gulf of Mexico on Monday inside a different Crew Dragon capsule. About four minutes before landing, four large sets of parachutes were released. These grooves are designed to fully open almost instantly when the capsule is within a mile of landing. But it took roughly a minute for one to swell, putting most of the burden of slowing the capsule down on the other three channels.
NASA and SpaceX officials said the capsule’s descent rate still looked good, but the “delayed parachute,” as described by Kathy Lueders, NASA’s chief of space operations, was a glitch that needed close scrutiny.
NASA officials discussed the smash issue at length with SpaceX engineers during a routine safety inspection at Kennedy Space Center before Crew-3 astronauts were launched aboard another Crew Dragon capsule on Wednesday. When these astronauts return in April, they will need to rely on the same type of parachutes.
Bill Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX official who once supervised humans, said that after examining flight data from Crew-2’s return and parachute production records from the subcontractor that built them, crews could not find any problems with the parachute that should have prevented Crew-3 from going into space. Spaceflight for NASA on Tuesday night.
“We’re still learning how to operate these vehicles, we’re learning how to fly in space,” he said, “and the way to do this safely is to keep looking at the data and learn from each flight. ”
SpaceX retrieved the Crew-2 capsule’s spent parachutes from the Gulf of Mexico and returned it to their facility in Cape Canaveral, Fla. for inspection. “To make sure there was nothing on that parachute that we didn’t understand,” said Mr Gerstenmaier, the authorities hung the faulty gutter on a crane and examined it in broad daylight. He added that everything seemed normal.
While the other three chutes may bear the weight of Crew Dragon, the capsule’s “delayed” chute, seen Monday night, highlights how simple parachutes are still necessary for safe spacecraft landings to Earth and other worlds such as Mars. For example, parachute problems Prevented ExoMars from launching on time, a joint Euro-Russian robotic rover for the red planet.
Landing parachutes have been a headache throughout NASA’s years of testing and a constant development challenge for both SpaceX and Boeing, the other company that built Starliner, the other company under NASA’s Commercial Crew program. years after SpaceX.
“It’s a behavior we’ve seen many times in other tests,” Ms. Lueders said of the faulty channel Monday night, adding that it’s something that “usually happens when the lines come together,” until it’s forcibly opened on landing. wind.
“What makes me feel a little more confident is that the loading and deceleration of the spacecraft seems nominal to us, which is good news,” he said.
[ad_2]
Source link