SpaceX faces key test of Dragon Spacecraft safety

Built into the walls of the Dragon Spacecraft are eight 3D printed SuperDraco rocket engines. Those engines have quite a kick, each producing 120,000 pounds of thrust, allowing Dragon to reach a speed of 100 miles per hour in less than a second. Testing the required Launch Abort System (LAS) is a necessary step in proving the Dragon capsule safe for ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.

LAS dates back to the late 1950s when powerful solid rocket motors were mounted on a tower above the Mercury and Apollo capsules. Today, Russian Soyuz and Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft as well as the upcoming NASA-designed Orion Capsule use a “tractor” LAS design to pull the capsule to safety from the launch pad.

Dragon uses a different design, mounting LAS engines on the capsule itself to urgently remove it from the booster. This enables “launch escape capability from the launch pad all the way to orbit” while the liquid-fueled engines also save on costs, according to SpaceX.

While similar tests have been performed over the years, a Pad Abort system has been used only once in an emergency. In 1983, Soyuz 7K-ST, bound for the Soviet Salyut 7 space station with cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Gennady Strekalov aboard, was pulled at 14-17 times the force of gravity from a pad fire seconds before the fully fueled rocket exploded.

LAS systems have never been used in an emergency by NASA, through controllers were very close to employing it when the Apollo 12 mission was struck by lightning 36 seconds after liftoff causing the spacecraft to lose power and guidance control. Ground controller John Aaron recalled the odd telemetry pattern they were faced with and relayed a switch position to astronaut Alan Bean who saved the mission from abort and continued on to the moon.