{"id":10175,"date":"2024-02-27T23:27:50","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T15:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacex-tests-new-emergency-escape-system-to-certify-pad-40-at-cape-canaveral-for-astronaut-missions\/"},"modified":"2024-02-27T23:27:50","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T15:27:50","slug":"spacex-tests-new-emergency-escape-system-to-certify-pad-40-at-cape-canaveral-for-astronaut-missions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacex-tests-new-emergency-escape-system-to-certify-pad-40-at-cape-canaveral-for-astronaut-missions\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX tests new emergency escape system to certify pad 40 at Cape Canaveral for astronaut missions"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_65502\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-65502\" style=\"width: 876px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65502\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/20240226_EGRESS_STILL2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"876\" height=\"584\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/20240226_EGRESS_STILL2.jpg 876w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/20240226_EGRESS_STILL2-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/20240226_EGRESS_STILL2-678x452.jpg 678w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/20240226_EGRESS_STILL2-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 876px) 100vw, 876px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-65502\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">SpaceX performed a deployment test of its new emergency egress system from the crew access tower at Space Launch Complex 40 on Monday, Feb. 26, 2024. Image: Adam Bernstein\/Spaceflight Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>SpaceX is closing in on certifying its launch pad at Space Launch Complex 40 to support astronaut and cargo missions with its second-generation Dragon spacecraft. On Monday, the company performed a test of its new emergency egress system featuring a type of deployable slide.<\/p>\n<p>The red slide flew out of a storage container positioned on the crew access tower and deployed along pre-stationed cables that extend to the ground, safely away from where a Falcon 9 rocket would stand. It differs notably from the slide-wire style baskets featured at Launch Complex 39A.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"SpaceX tests new astronaut escape system\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lO-I4a3HbFc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX\u2019s vice president of Build and Flight Reliability, alluded to Monday\u2019s test during a teleconference about the forthcoming Crew-8 mission to the International Space Station. He said before they use the new tower to support an astronaut mission, they would like to test it out on one of their Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) flights.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe would like to do a cargo flight first, if we can, and we think CRS-30 is probably the right time to do that,\u201d Gerstenmaier said. \u201cAnd the work\u2019s pretty much completed at the pad. Got some stuff to do next week, but we\u2019ll be in good shape for CRS-30.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That mission is set for sometime in mid-March, though the date is still being shored up. Joel Montalbano, NASA\u2019s ISS Program Manager, said it comes during an incredibly busy year for the Space Station.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have 17 ISS missions this year, this calendar year. So, it\u2019s like the coolest game of Tetris to try and manage all this and then you add in the non-ISS missions and try and manage across the different launchpad availability,\u201d Montalbano said.<\/p>\n<p>Adding a human-rated pad for SpaceX would be a boost to both it and NASA. Currently, Launch Complex 39A is the only site that can support the launches of both the Cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon spacecraft.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_65111\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-65111\" style=\"width: 678px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65111\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/20240117-Crew-Access-Arm-work.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"678\" height=\"452\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/20240117-Crew-Access-Arm-work.jpg 678w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/20240117-Crew-Access-Arm-work-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 678px) 100vw, 678px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-65111\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Workers inside the crew access arm at pad 39A load last-minute items aboard the Crew Dragon on Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024. Image: Michael Cain\/Spaceflight Now.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>During a press conference marking the arrival of the Crew-8 astronauts and cosmonaut, mission commander, NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick, remarked about how busy the Cape has become.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho would\u2019ve though five or six years ago that the competition for launch or the constraint to launch would be a launch pad?\u201d Dominick said, referring to the recent launch of the <b>IM-1 robotic mission<\/b> to the Moon. \u201cWe delayed our launch a few days because there\u2019s stiff competition to get out there to 39A. It\u2019s not a rocket constraint, it\u2019s a pad constraint.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Steve Stich is among those looking forward to relieving some of that pressure by allowing pad 40 to share the Dragon load from pad 39A. He said NASA and SpaceX were able to validate some systems during the recent NG-20 launch, which sent Northrop Grumman\u2019s Cygnus spacecraft to the ISS with thousands of pounds of cargo and science supplies onboard.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of the crew systems that are required at the pad specifically for Dragon were not tested with the Northrop Grumman 20 flight. And then, we\u2019re targeting to have it online by Crew-9 later this year for crew capability,\u201d Stich said. \u201cIt\u2019s good to have that redundancy. Something could always happen to the systems at 39A and so, we\u2019re really happy to have that backup pad.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SpaceX performed a deployment test of its new emergency egress system from the crew access tower at Space Launch Complex 40 on Monday, Feb. 26, 2024. Image: Adam Bernstein\/Spaceflight Now SpaceX is closing in on certifying its launch pad at Space Launch Complex 40 to support astronaut and cargo missions with its second-generation Dragon spacecraft. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[745,235,1450,190,675,316],"class_list":["post-10175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-cargo-dragon","tag-crew-dragon","tag-emergency-egress-system","tag-nasa","tag-slc-40","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}