SpaceX Says The Problem Was With The Aircraft, Not The Payload

A helicopter carrying a Crew Dragon mockup for a parachute test last week had to drop the payload in order to prevent the helicopter from going down.

Teslarati reports that the helicopter experienced "instability" during the flight, and out of an abundance of caution, the pilot decided to drop the mockup spacecraft. The payload dropped to Earth without the benefit of a parachute.

"During a planned parachute drop test [last week], the test article suspended underneath the helicopter became unstable. Out of an abundance of caution and to keep the helicopter crew safe, the pilot pulled the emergency release. As the helicopter was not yet at target conditions, the test article was not armed, and as such, the parachute system did not initiate the parachute deployment sequence. While the test article was lost, this was not a failure of the parachute system and most importantly no one was injured. NASA and SpaceX are working together to determine the testing plan going forward in advance of Crew Dragon’s second demonstration mission,” SpaceX said in a media release.

SpaceX said that the loss of the test article was in no way related to the mockup spacecraft or the parachute system. The test article was destroyed by the incident.

This is the second issue for the Crew Dragon program in just a few days. NASA has asked for a full accounting of the failure of a Merlin engine during the most recent SpaceX satellite launch.

Fortunately, because this problem was not with the test article, SpaceX believes it will not represent a significant setback in the first launch of astronauts to ISS from U.S. soil in May. The engine problem may be a different story.

The parachute test was one of the last system-level tests for the Crew Dragon before it can be cleared for human spaceflight.

(Image provided by SpaceX)

FMI: Source report