The timetable for the first manned flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon may have been thrown into question after the spacecraft appeared to suffer a serious engine malfunction. On April 20 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, an "anomaly" was reported during a static fire test that may have resulted in the release of toxic rocket propellants. Precise information is still very scarce on the ground, but a report in Florida Today says that one of their photographers on assignment at Cocoa Beach, near Cape Canaveral, witnessed orange plumes rising from the NASA space center at about 3:30 pm EDT, where the Crew Dragon was undergoing static fire tests. Which Dragon was used is unclear, but the Crew Dragon that recently visited the International Space Station (ISS) was scheduled to make a series of post-flight tests. "On April 20, 2019, an anomaly occurred at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during the Dragon 2 static test fire," said US Air Force spokesman Jim Williams. "The anomaly was contained and there were no injuries." In a later statement, SpaceX said, "Earlier today, SpaceX conducted a series of engine tests on a Crew Dragon test vehicle on our test stand at Landing Zone 1 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The initial tests completed successfully but the final test resulted in an anomaly on the test stand. "Ensuring that our systems meet rigorous safety standards and detecting anomalies like this prior to flight are the main reasons why we test. Our teams are investigating and working closely with our NASA partners." Twitter statement by NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine Twitter Meanwhile, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine posted on Twitter, "NASA has been notified about the results of the SpaceX Static Fire Test and the anomaly that occurred during the final test. We will work closely to ensure we safely move forward with our Commercial Crew Program." The exact nature of the mishap aboard the craft that is designed to ferry passengers into space has still not been made public, but it appears to center on the eight SuperDraco engines. These were originally designed to allow the Crew Dragon to make a ground landing, but are now used as the emergency abort rockets to get the capsule clear of the launch pad in the event of an emergency. The SuperDraco is a restartable, throttelable engine that is powered by a mixture of monomethylhydrazine fuel and dinitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. These provide each engine with 16,000 lb of thrust, but the propellants are highly volatile and toxic. They are also hypergolic, which means that they ignite on contact with one another. As a result, any leak during a ground test is dangerous and a simultaneous leak of fuel and oxidizer can be catastrophic. The cause of the accident and the details are still unknown, or unreleased, and the impact is still uncertain. However, because Crew Dragon must pass very rigorous standards before it is declared safe to carry astronauts, anything other than the most minor of mishaps is likely to result in an extensive review – therefore, the first manned Crew Dragon mission, which was scheduled for sometime after July 25, is now likely to be pushed back. Source: Florida Today<doc-sep>A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft hangs outside the International Space Station's Cupola module. The craft was there during the company's eighth resupply mission to the station, photographed by NASA astronaut Tim Kopra in April. As NASA and SpaceX look into cause of an accident that marred an uncrewed test of SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule Saturday (April 20), agency officials say the company's upcoming space station launch — which uses a different type of Dragon spacecraft — is still on target. During a press teleconference today (April 22) on the science scheduled to launch to the space station, NASA public affairs officer Joshua Finch confirmed the cargo launch's target date. "The NASA and SpaceX teams are still assessing the anomaly that occurred," Finch said, "but I can tell you we are still tracking, as of today, for Tuesday, April 30, and that launch will be at 4:22 a.m. Eastern time," Finch said, directing reporters to an official statement from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. The cargo launch, from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, had already been pushed back from April 26 due to what NASA officials called station and orbital mechanics constraints. The April 20 Crew Dragon accident occurred during a test firing of the capsule's SuperDraco abort engines, causing large plumes of smoke visible from nearby. There were no injuries, 45th Space Wing officials told Florida Today. The Crew Dragon's eight SuperDraco engines are designed to pull the spacecraft free of its Falcon 9 rocket during a launch emergency and carry an astronaut crew to safety. SpaceX's cargo version of Dragon spacecraft is not built to carry astronauts, and does not have the SuperDraco abort engines.<doc-sep>A recovery ship hauls SpaceX's first Crew Dragon capsule out of the Atlantic Ocean after the spacecraft's splashdown on March 8, 2019. The United States' circuitous road to human spaceflight self-sufficiency just took another turn. On Saturday (April 20), a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule experienced an anomaly during a test of its SuperDraco escape engines, which are designed to get astronauts out of harm's way in the event of a launch emergency. Nobody was injured, but the capsule — which flew a successful uncrewed demonstration mission to the International Space Station (ISS) just last month — may have incurred serious damage. Related: SpaceX's Crew Dragon Demo-1 Test Flight in Pictures This particular spacecraft was scheduled to perform an in-flight abort trial this summer, an uncrewed test of those SuperDracos that will help pave the way for SpaceX's first crewed journey to the ISS for NASA. So, if this Crew Dragon cannot go, those key milestones could be pushed back significantly. A delay would hardly be unprecedented; the timeline for launching American astronauts from American soil has shifted to the right repeatedly over the past few years. Filling the shuttle's shoes The United States has been unable to get people to and from orbit without help since July 2011, when NASA's space shuttle fleet retired after 30 years of service. Ever since then, NASA has bought seats aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, for more than $80 million apiece at current prices. (Virgin Galactic has performed two crewed spaceflights since December 2018 , but that company's SpaceShipTwo is a suborbital vehicle.) This dependence was always going to be temporary. NASA began funding commercial-crew activities in 2010, in an attempt to spur the development of private astronaut taxis that will fill the shuttle's shoes. The next year, NASA awarded a total of nearly $270 million to four companies for such work — SpaceX, Boeing, Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada. In those early days, the stated goal was to get at least one private American crew-carrying vehicle up and running by the end of 2016 . In 2014, Boeing and SpaceX emerged from the pack with multibillion-dollar awards from NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Boeing got $4.2 billion to develop its CST-100 Starliner capsule, and SpaceX snagged $2.6 billion for Crew Dragon . At the time, NASA said the goal was to have at least one of those capsules operational by the end of 2017. The early schedule slips occurred primarily because Congress did not allocate enough funding for commercial crew, NASA officials have said. And both Boeing and SpaceX have experienced technical issues recently, adding to the delays. Related: Crew Dragon and Starliner: A Look at the Upcoming Astronaut Taxis Problems on the test stand Boeing, for example, had planned to fly an uncrewed test mission to the ISS — that company's equivalent of SpaceX's recently completed Demo-1 flight — in August 2018. But in June of last year, a problem cropped up during a test of Starliner's launch-abort engines. Shortly thereafter, Boeing representatives announced that the company was pushing back the test mission, known as Orbital Flight Test (OFT), to late 2018 or early 2019. OFT was soon retargeted for March 2019, then April, May and finally August. Boeing representatives attributed this latest slip to potential conflicts with another mission launching out of Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station this spring; Starliner would have had just a two-day window in May to get up and out, and that was too tight for comfort . OFT will occur after a full-on test of Starliner's launch-abort system. That "pad abort test" is scheduled to take place sometime this summer. Boeing still aims to fly its first crewed test flight to the ISS before the end of the year, company representatives have said. Indeed, NASA's commercial-crew schedule lists "late 2019" as the current target date. SpaceX had been aiming to launch its in-flight abort test this June. If that had gone well, a crewed demonstration mission to the ISS, known as Demo-2, could have lifted off as early as July. Those target dates will almost certainly change as a result of Saturday's anomaly, but it's too soon to speculate by how much. "There are bound to be delays, because apparently both the capsule and the test stand were lost," said space policy expert John Logsdon, a professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs in Washington, D.C. "But I think it's prudent to wait until we get a bit more information before we start talking about whether it's weeks or months or years," he told Space.com. Part of the business Logsdon also stressed that such setbacks aren't terribly surprising; they come with the territory of developing a new crewed spacecraft. "We've been down this road before," he said. "You have to remind people that we had engines blowing up during shuttle development, and, clearly, we had the Apollo 1 fire ." (That fire, which took place during a launch-rehearsal test on Jan. 27, 1967, is one of NASA's biggest tragedies. It claimed the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.) NASA officials made the same point, stressing that Saturday's unfortunate event offers a chance to make Crew Dragon a better, safer vehicle. "This is why we test," NASA chief Jim Bridenstine said in a statement. "We will learn, make the necessary adjustments and safely move forward with our Commercial Crew Program." There's another lesson here as well — one that the Apollo 1 fire, the losses of the shuttles Challenger and Columbia and other spaceflight disasters have drilled into us. "It's evidence that sending people into space is hard," Logsdon said. "I think it's important to take a deep breath, assess what actually happened and fix it, because we need to regain the ability to launch people."<doc-sep>SpaceX has had a really fantastic 2019 thus far, with its crowning achievement being the successful launch, docking, and reentry of its Crew Dragon capsule that is expected to be delivered to NASA for crewed missions sooner rather than later. Everything — well, almost everything — appeared to be going SpaceX’s way this year… until Saturday, that is. According to NASA and multiple eyewitness reports something went very, very wrong with the Crew Dragon vehicle during an abort engine test at Cape Canaveral over the weekend. The engines, which are designed to push the crew capsule out and away from the rest of the launch vehicle if something goes wrong, suffered an “anomaly,” according to NASA. Images snapped by people close to the facility suggest the vehicle may have been destroyed in the process. Related stories NASA plans to study this galactic 'jellyfish' with its new James Webb Space Telescope NASA just sent robotic 'bees' to the International Space Station NASA plans to send astronauts to the Moon's South Pole in five years Multiple photos from sightseers nearby the launch facility appear to show a massive cloud of reddish-orange smoke billowing out from the vehicle’s location. A statement by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine confirms the anomaly while noting that the agency and SpaceX are working together to figure out exactly what went wrong. Additionally, a video that began making the rounds on Twitter shortly after the first reports of a problem appears to show a Crew dragon capsule essentially exploding on the launch pad. It’s important to note that this video has not been independently verified by any other eyewitnesses who would have been close enough to see it, much less by SpaceX or NASA. Take it with a grain of salt. The video is incredibly low resolution and grainy, but what we can see would seem to match the arrangement of a static fire test, with the vehicle secured to a scaffold of sorts and, presumably, ready to test fire its engines. Story continues The Los Angeles Times reports that the vehicle in question was indeed the same one that docked with the International Space Station just a number of weeks ago. That doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about why the vehicle’s engine(s) failed in this test, but it’s an interesting note. As NASA’s Bridenstine says in his statement, this is why tests are vitally important to the safety of crewed spaceflight, but it’s still an unfortunate setback for SpaceX, which appeared to be poised to handily beat competitor Boeing to the punch in delivering a crew-capable spacecraft to NASA. Sign up for BGR's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Trending Right Now: See the original version of this article on BGR.com<doc-sep>
Less than two weeks after SpaceX triumphantly launched its huge Falcon Heavy rocket on its first commercial flight, the company suffered a setback when its Crew Dragon capsule was hit by an “anomaly” during testing that could force the postponement of the capsule’s first crewed flight to the International Space Station. No injuries were reported in the incident, which occurred during an uncrewed engine test at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Photos taken by eyewitnesses showed plumes of smoke coming from the site. “Earlier today, SpaceX conducted a series of engine tests on a Crew Dragon test vehicle on our test stand at Landing Zone 1 in Cape Canaveral, Florida,” SpaceX officials said Saturday in a statement to Florida Today, a newspaper based in central Florida. “The initial tests completed successfully but the final test resulted in an anomaly on the test stand.” The company didn’t provide details about the anomaly but said it had begun an investigation. In a statement released Saturday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the agency was working with SpaceX to assess the incident. "This is why we test,” he said. “We will learn, make the necessary adjustments and safely move forward with our Commercial Crew Program.” SpaceX launched the Crew Dragon capsule on its first uncrewed test flight to the space station March 2. The spacecraft spent almost a week attached to the orbiting outpost before returning to Earth and splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Florida. The company is expected to conduct one more uncrewed flight of the capsule to test the spacecraft’s emergency abort system. After that, NASA could authorize the first Crew Dragon flight to the space station with two astronauts onboard. Neither SpaceX nor NASA has announced the dates for these upcoming flights or said how they could be affected by the recent accident. The Crew Dragon is one of two new commercially built capsules designed to ferry astronauts to and from the space station — and end NASA’s long reliance on Russian spacecraft. Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule, which has been plagued by delays, is expected to conduct its first uncrewed test flight in August. Want more stories about space? SIGN UP FOR THE MACH NEWSLETTER AND FOLLOW NBC NEWS MACH ON TWITTER, FACEBOOK, AND INSTAGRAM.