SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft has been largely successful in NASA’s missions, in the form of Crew Dragon capsules that carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), and Cargo Dragon planes that carry equipment, research, and supplies to the International Space Station as well. This week, NASA and SpaceX announced that they are looking into an issue with the opening of the parachute, although the problem does not appear to be serious.
The Dragon craft uses parachutes to slow its descent through Earth’s atmosphere before it descends into the ocean, but during the resupply mission that began on January 24, 2022, one of the four parachutes was delayed. Crew Dragon last year, Digitartlends reported.
“During the return of the SpaceX CRS-24 mission, teams noticed one main parachute lagging during inflation such as the return of the Crew-2 mission,” NASA spokesperson Josh Finch said in a statement to SpaceNews. Fully unlock all four main parachutes before setting off on both missions.”
The Dragon can land safely even with only three parachutes. But NASA and SpaceX are investigating the root cause of the problem by reviewing canopy data.
The goal is to complete the review before the launch of the Crew-4 mission, scheduled for April 15, 2022, when four astronauts will be launched to the International Space Station.
One possibility is that with four parachutes, it may naturally take longer to inflate as it is effectively blocked by the other three and this is part of normal operations.
“This is going to be investigated thoroughly, and it’s very similar to what we did in a very fast way after Crew-2,” Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of construction and flight reliability, said in a call with reporters, as reported by Space.com. other data and see if we can really get smarter about how these systems work.”