Crew Dragon C204 was part of

Crew Dragon Dragon 2 is a class of partially reusable spacecraft developed and manufactured by American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, primarily for flights to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX has also launched private missions such as Ins ...

flight vehicle SN 2-1 (sometimes incorrectly called C201) manufactured and operated by SpaceX and used by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

Commercial Crew Program The Commercial Crew Program (CCP) provides commercially-operated crew transportation service to and from the International Space Station (ISS) under contract to NASA, conducting crew rotations between the expeditions of the International S ...

. Used in the uncrewed Demo-1 mission, it was launched atop a

Falcon 9 Falcon 9 is a partially reusable medium lift launch vehicle that can carry cargo and crew into Earth orbit, produced by American aerospace company SpaceX. The rocket has two stages. The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and pay ...

rocket on 2 March 2019, arriving at the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...

on 3 March 2019. It was the first orbital test flight of the Dragon 2 spacecraft. The spacecraft was unexpectedly destroyed on 20 April 2019 during a separate test when firing the SuperDraco engines at

Landing Zone 1 Landing Zone 1 and Landing Zone 2, also known as LZ-1 and LZ-2 respectively, are landing facilities on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for recovering components of SpaceX's VTVL reusable launch vehicles. LZ-1 and LZ-2 were built on land le ...

History

SpaceX was contracted by

to fly Demo-1 mission as part of the

. Initial plans had hoped to see flights as early as 2015. Demo-1 was eventually slated for no earlier than December 2016, and then delayed several times throughout 2017. The first exact date was published by NASA in November 2018 to be 17 January 2019, but this got pushed into February 2019. The static fire took place on 24 January 2019 and the launch date was set to 23 February 2019. By the end of January 2019, the launch was delayed to no earlier than 2 March 2019 according to a

FCC The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdictio ...

filing by SpaceX for Dragon 2 capsule telemetry, tracking, and command. SpaceX DM1 – Anne McClain – Litte Earth

Crew Dragon C204 was successfully launched uncrewed on top of a

rocket on 2 March 2019 from the historic LC 39A from the

Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968 ...

in Cape Canaveral,

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

. The flight was intended to certify the Crew Dragon to carry humans, demonstrating on-orbit operation of avionics, communications, telemetry, life support, electrical, and propulsion systems, as well as the guidance, navigation, control (GNC) systems. It docked to the

the next day on 3 March 2019. It spent a total of five days docked to the ISS before it undocked from the ISS on 8 March 2019. The spacecraft performed entry into the

Earth's atmosphere The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing fo ...

and splashed down in the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

about off Florida's east coast. The capsule was recovered using SpaceX's recovery ship, ''

GO Searcher ''Megan'', formerly called ''GO Searcher'' is a SpaceX Dragon recovery vessel. It is one of the offshore supply ships operated by Guice Offshore. The other identical ship is '' Shannon''. History ''Megan'' is the primary recovery vessel for t ...

'', and was returned to shore, where it was examined and the data collected by the on board sensors was analyzed. Instead of carrying astronauts to the ISS, the spacecraft carried "Ripley," a mannequin wearing SpaceX's custom flight suit. Ripley is a named after Sigourney Weaver's character in the ''Alien'' movies franchise. The capsule was weighted similarly to missions with astronauts onboard and carried approximately of supplies and equipment, including "Little Earth," a plush toy serving as zero-g indicator. On 20 April 2019, Crew Dragon C204 was destroyed in an explosion during static fire testing at the

facility. On the day of the explosion, the initial testing of the Crew Dragon's Draco thrusters was successful, with the accident occurring during the test of the

SuperDraco SuperDraco is a hypergolic propellant rocket engine designed and built by SpaceX. It is part of the SpaceX Draco family of rocket engines. A redundant array of eight SuperDraco engines provides fault-tolerant propulsion for use as a launch es ...

abort system. Telemetry, high-speed camera footage, and analysis of recovered debris indicate the problem occurred when a small amount of dinitrogen tetroxide leaked into a

helium Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. ...

line used to pressurize the propellant tanks. The leakage apparently occurred during pre-test processing. As a result, the pressurization of the system 100 ms before firing damaged a check valve and resulted in the explosion. Since the destroyed capsule had been slated for use in the upcoming in-flight abort test, the explosion and investigation delayed that test and the subsequent crewed orbital test.

Flights

References

External links

* {{SpaceX SpaceX Dragon 2 Individual space vehicles NASA spacecraft

History

Flights

See also

References

External links