CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – SpaceX fired the rocket that will transport its next crew of astronauts to the International Space Station next week.
The private space company conducted a static firing test of its Falcon 9 rocket at Road 39A here in NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Saturday (April 22). The test is one of the last major milestones ahead of a planned launch on Thursday (April 22).
The routine pre-test began counting down the long-awaited flight of the company’s second operational mission of the Dragon crew capsule, called Crew-2. The spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station, with two NASA astronauts and one astronaut each from the Japanese and European space agencies.
The test took place on Saturday in the preceding hours as expected. Smoke and fire briefly flowed when the rocket’s nine Merlin 1D engines were lit. The short ignition, also known as a test for static fire, is a standard part of the procedures started beforehand and one of the last important milestones before the elevator.
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During the test, the Falcon 9 is kept on the cushion while its nine first engines are briefly shot. This enables crew to ensure that all systems are working properly and that the rocket is ready to fly. Shortly after the test, SpaceX tweeted that the static fire test was a success and that the company planned to launch EDT (1011 GMT) on Thursday at 06:11.
The flight marks SpaceX’s 11th mission of the year and the second long-running mission launched from Florida. The rocket’s first phase is expected to land on one of SpaceX’s drones, “Of course I still love you”. Following a successful removal, the crew capsule will spend just under 24 hours at the space station before arriving at the outpost early Friday (April 23).
In a move from the company’s previous two missions, the Dragon Hairstyle and Launcher have flown before. Following the success of the Demo-2 mission, which launched two NASA astronauts to the space station in May 2020, NASA has given SpaceX permission to reuse both the crew capsule and the rocket on future missions.
For this mission, the first phase is the same one that brought the Crew-1 astronauts into space in November, and the Dragon capsule is the same one that Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley flew on last year. His name is Endeavor.
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While the Dragon capsule sat on top of the rocket, the duo rolled out of the hangar on Friday morning (April 16) and rolled onto the launch site at complex 39A. The couple was 78.1 meters tall and was lifted upright later in the afternoon.
Safe at the starting point, teams were up early Saturday morning loading the rocket with super-cooled propellants – kerosene and liquid oxygen – and briefly ignited the nine first-phase Merlin 1D engines.
The engines fired shortly after 06:11 EDT (1011 GMT), delivering 1.7 million pounds of thrust while the booster remained firmly on the ground. Engineers reviewed the data before confirming that they would proceed with the planned launch of the Falcon 9 on Thursday morning.
Falcon 9 Static Fire Test Completed – Targeted on Thursday, April 22 at 6:11 AM EDT for the launch of Dragon’s second operational mission to the @space station, “SpaceX wrote about the test on Twitter.
The static fire test comes on the heels of a flight readiness review. On Thursday night (April 15), NASA gave SpaceX the green light to continue preparing for the launch, with one exception.
During the pre-flight inspection, engineers noticed that more liquid oxygen was being loaded into the Falcon 9 than expected – a discrepancy that occurred during the flight history of the vehicle without incident.
“There’s one more thing we need to work on,” Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s former head of human spaceflight, and SpaceX’s current vice president of building and flight reliability, said Thursday during a media briefing. “In Texas, we discovered that there was a possible loading error, where we could actually add a little extra oxygen to our tank than normal. We did this throughout our entire flying history.”
With a successful static fire test now under SpaceX’s belt, crews have probably solved the problem and the rocket is ready to fly. A final review before the launch is scheduled for Tuesday (April 20) to discuss remaining unresolved issues prior to the launch.
Following a successful lifting Thursday morning, SpaceX plans to land its first phase booster on a floating platform at sea. If successful, it will be the company’s 80th recovery.
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