The Dragon 2 ''DragonFly'' (Dragon C201) was a prototype

suborbital A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital r ...

rocket-powered A rocket-powered aircraft or rocket plane is an aircraft that uses a rocket engine for propulsion, sometimes in addition to airbreathing jet engines. Rocket planes can achieve much higher speeds than similarly sized jet aircraft, but typicall ...

test vehicle for a propulsively-landed version of the

SpaceX Dragon 2 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 spaceflight, private m ...

. ''DragonFly'' underwent testing in Texas at the McGregor Rocket Test Facility in October 2015. However, the development eventually ceased as the verification burden imposed by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

was too great to justify it.

Design

The ''DragonFly'' test vehicle is powered by eight

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 escap ...

hypergolic A hypergolic propellant is a rocket propellant combination used in a rocket engine, whose components spontaneously ignite when they come into contact with each other. The two propellant components usually consist of a fuel and an oxidizer. The ...

rocket engines, arranged in a redundant pattern to support

fault-tolerance Fault tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of one or more faults within some of its components. If its operating quality decreases at all, the decrease is proportional to the ...

in the propulsion system design. SuperDracos use a

storable propellant A propellant (or propellent) is a mass that is expelled or expanded in such a way as to create a thrust or other motive force in accordance with Newton's third law of motion, and "propel" a vehicle, projectile, or fluid payload. In vehicles, the e ...

combination of

monomethylhydrazine Monomethylhydrazine (mono-methyl hydrazine, MMH) is a highly toxic, volatile hydrazine derivative with the chemical formula . It is used as a rocket propellant in bipropellant rocket engines because it is hypergolic with various oxidizers such as ...

(MMH)

fuel A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chemical energy but ...

and

nitrogen tetroxide Dinitrogen tetroxide, commonly referred to as nitrogen tetroxide (NTO), and occasionally (usually among ex-USSR/Russia rocket engineers) as amyl, is the chemical compound N2O4. It is a useful reagent in chemical synthesis. It forms an equilibrium ...

oxidizer An oxidizing agent (also known as an oxidant, oxidizer, electron recipient, or electron acceptor) is a substance in a redox chemical reaction that gains or " accepts"/"receives" an electron from a (called the , , or ). In other words, an oxid ...

(NTO), the same propellants used in the much smaller

Draco Draco is the Latin word for serpent or dragon. Draco or Drako may also refer to: People * Draco (lawgiver) (from Greek: Δράκων; 7th century BC), the first lawgiver of ancient Athens, Greece, from whom the term ''draconian'' is derived * ...

thrusters designed for

attitude control Attitude control is the process of controlling the orientation of an aerospace vehicle with respect to an inertial frame of reference or another entity such as the celestial sphere, certain fields, and nearby objects, etc. Controlling vehicle ...

and maneuvering on the first-generation

Dragon spacecraft American private space transportation company SpaceX has developed and produced several spacecraft named Dragon. The first family member, now referred to as Dragon 1, flew 23 cargo missions to the ISS between 2010 and 2020 before being retired ...

. While SuperDraco engines are capable of of thrust, during use on DragonFly flight test vehicle, each will be throttled to less than to maintain vehicle stability.

History

In May 2014, SpaceX publicly announced an extensive test program for a propulsively-landed

space capsule A space capsule is an often-crewed spacecraft that uses a blunt-body reentry capsule to reenter the Earth's atmosphere without wings. Capsules are distinguished from other satellites primarily by the ability to survive reentry and return a payl ...

called ''DragonFly''. The tests were to be run in Texas at the McGregor Rocket Test Facility in 2014–2015. A flight test program of up to 60 flights was proposed. An outline for thirty of those flights included two ''propulsive assist'' (parachutes plus thrusters) and two ''propulsive landing'' (no parachutes) landing-only test flights, where DragonFly would be dropped from a helicopter at an altitude of approximately . The other 26 test flights were projected to be vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) test flights that will take off from a purpose-built pad: eight were to be ''propulsive assist hops'' (landing with parachutes plus thrusters) and 18 were to be ''full propulsive hops'', where the landing is made with only rocket propulsion, similar to the

Grasshopper Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago. Grasshopp ...

and

F9R Dev Falcon 9 prototypes were experimental flight test reusable rockets that performed vertical takeoffs and landings. The project was privately funded by SpaceX, with no funds provided by any government until later on. Two prototypes were built, a ...

booster stage test flights that SpaceX also flew out of their McGregor facility. Test flights were planned to include a subset of tests that would test both the DragonFly space capsule and the attached trunk, an unpressurized structure that typically carries mission-specific cargo and houses the power supply system for Dragon orbital flights. The others were planned to be test landings of only the capsule itself, without the trunk. A Final Environmental Assessment was issued by the

FAA The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

in August 2014. The FAA determined that the ''DragonFly'' test program "would not significantly impact the quality of the human environment." The assessment estimated that the program would take two years for SpaceX to complete and considered a total of 30 annual operations of the ''DragonFly'' test vehicle in each year of operation. SpaceX received a renewal permit from the FAA on July 29, 2016, to continue another year of

flight test Flight testing is a branch of aeronautical engineering that develops specialist equipment required for testing aircraft behaviour and systems. Instrumentation systems are developed using proprietary transducers and data acquisition systems. D ...

ing. The DragonFly test vehicle—formerly the Dragon2 test article that was used in the May 2015 pad abort test—was at McGregor for the start of the two-year test program by October 2015. However, the development eventually ceased as the verification burden imposed by

was too great to justify it.

References

External links

* {{Reusable launch systems SpaceX Dragon 2 Experimental rockets of the United States Individual space vehicles SpaceX prototype vehicles Suborbital spaceflight VTVL rockets

Design

History

See also

References

External links