SpaceX’s Dragon Capsule Can Now Land Like a Rocket in Case of an Emergency

Over the past 4 years, the Dragon spacecraft has returned 8 NASA crews by performing a parachute-assisted splashdown successful the ocean, but the unit capsule present has a backup landing method successful the lawsuit of an emergency.

SpaceX’s Dragon tin onshore propulsively utilizing its 8 SuperDraco thrusters, a diagnostic that was primitively intended to beryllium the spacecraft’s main mode of returning to Earth but was aboriginal scrapped owed to information concerns. During the unrecorded webcast of the Crew-9 motorboat connected September 27, NASA officials announced that successful the lawsuit that each 4 parachutes neglect to deploy, Dragon would onshore connected a coagulated aboveground utilizing the SuperDracos motorboat abort system.

“Dragon was ever designed to onshore propulsively, but I didn’t privation to hazard it arsenic the superior method,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote connected X. During the aboriginal days of its development, SpaceX marketed Dragon’s quality to onshore utilizing its 8 SuperDraco engines, which would dilatory the spacecraft down during its descent until its velocity reached zero, astatine that constituent its landing legs would widen truthful the capsule tin interaction down connected the pad. However, a batch tin alteration successful 10 years.

A fewer months aft NASA awarded SpaceX its Commercial Crew Program contract, the institution announced that its Dragon spacecraft would usage parachutes to execute a splashdown with the astronauts alternatively than landing connected a coagulated surface. It was aboriginal revealed that NASA felt much comfy relying connected the parachute landing system, according to NASA Spaceflight. The abstraction bureau besides feared that the openings for the extendable legs could pb to the enactment of blistery spots during the spacecraft’s reentry done Earth’s atmosphere, which could origin the breakup of the unit capsule.

During the motorboat webcast, Bill Gerstenmaier, vice president of physique and formation reliability astatine SpaceX, noted that Dragons susceptible of making propulsive landing person flown connected non-crewed missions before, but the Crew-9 ngo marks the archetypal clip it’s being utilized connected a NASA crewed mission.

By now, NASA has plentifulness of crushed to spot SpaceX and its quality to motorboat and instrumentality its unit of astronauts safely to Earth. The Dragon spacecraft that precocious launched to the International Space Station is besides liable for bringing backmost 2 astronauts who had flown to orbit connected committee Boeing’s cursed Starliner spacecraft, which was aboriginal deemed unfit to instrumentality its unit backmost to Earth. That mightiness person been wherefore the Dragon spacecraft was yet allowed to support its propulsive landing strategy useful successful lawsuit of an emergency.