SpaceX discovered a flaw on its Falcon 9 rocket and the rocket's transporter erector stand as part of a static fire test for NASA's upcoming Crew-11 mission. The Crew-11 will lift off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida tomorrow, and SpaceX's Bill Gerstenmaier explained during a press call that an engine controller failed after the test, while SpaceX discovered a problem with the stand before it attempted a static fire on Monday.
SpaceX & NASA Ready To Fly Crew-11 With Several Upgrades For Crew Dragon Spacecraft
During the press call, Gerstenmaier outlined that SpaceX auto aborted Monday's static fire 57 seconds before the rocket's engines were to light up. The abort "was caused by an error in the transporter erector cradle arm indication," said the SpaceX official, as he added that the "arms performed nominally, they did exactly what they were supposed to do but the abort was caused by essentially a false sensor," he revealed.
SpaceX corrected the error and adjusted the sensor before yesterday's successful Falcon 9 static fire. A static fire test fires up all of a rocket's engines before a launch to root out any anomalies that could create trouble during launch. SpaceX "went back and reviewed all our alarms, all our alerts, all our calibrations, all the indications to" ensure that an abort would not occur on launch date while a crew was onboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The upcoming mission will be a historic flight for Dragon as it will mark the first time a spacecraft flies for its sixth mission. SpaceX will also use a new drogue parachute design, a new heat shield structure and improved astronaut suits on the Crew-11 mission.
Gerstenmaier added that in order to account for the launch site's temperature, SpaceX will also load some of the Dragon's propellants earlier before the crew has boarded the ship. The firm "reviewed the post-flight data from both Crew-9 and Axiom-4. We reviewed the Dragon data and the Dragon interactions with Falcon during the static fire," he outlined.
As for the Falcon 9, Crew-11 will mark the rocket's third mission, with the previous missions being an Axiom Space crewed mission and a Starlink launch. Gerstenmaier revealed that SpaceX discovered that an engine controller had failed on the Falcon 9 rocket after the static fire. The controller, which belongs to engine number five, "was fine during the static fire, but after it failed," he said.
However, after SpaceX reviewed the data, it discovered that the "failure signature we've kind of seen before and we've also evaluated the consequences if this failure were to occur in flight, and it would not have a problem for us if it occurred late in flight," he said.
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