Tehran 03 May _The company had two big boxes to check off ahead of the planned May 27 liftoff of Demo-2, a test flight that will send NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule.
One was a 27th and final drop test of Crew Dragon's newly redesigned parachute system, known as the Mark 3. That test occurred today (May 1), and all went well, SpaceX representatives said.
"27th and final test of Crew Dragon's upgraded Mark 3 parachutes complete — one step closer to flying @NASA astronauts @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug to the @space_station and safely returning them back home to Earth," SpaceX said via its official Twitter account.
The other issue concerned a failure of one of the nine Merlin engines on the first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during a March launch that lofted 60 of the company's Starlink internet satellites. The anomaly didn't interfere with the mission — the satellites reached orbit just fine — but Demo-2 will also use a Falcon 9, so NASA and SpaceX conducted an investigation to make sure the same thing won't happen again on the upcoming crew flight.
"We have reviewed the anomaly resolution of the Starlink launch and actually have cleared the engines on our vehicle for that failure," Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said during a news conference today. "So, that actually is behind us right now."
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