NASA, SpaceX Conduct Emergency Evacuation Exercises For Demo 2 Mission

NASA and SpaceX recently conducted an exercise together to test how fast they could evacuate personnel during an emergency situation. The egress exercise was carried out in preparation for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Demo 2 mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

The event was held on April 3 at the Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It featured teams from NASA and SpaceX as they carried out important preparations for an upcoming mission.

Demo 2 will serve as SpaceX’s first human spaceflight to the ISS using its Crew Dragon capsule. It will be part of the company’s commitment to providing commercial spaceflight services to NASA. The upcoming mission is expected to launch in May this year via the Falcon 9 rocket.

The mission will be spearheaded by NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken. Upon reaching the ISS, these two astronauts will stay aboard the station for about two weeks before heading back to Earth using the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Before proceeding with the momentous mission, teams from NASA and SpaceX carried out an important exercise in preparation for an emergency situation. The demonstration mainly focused on how fast members of the two teams can evacuate crew personnel from the launch pad during an emergency.

“NASA and SpaceX personnel, including the Kennedy pad rescue team, participated in the exercise,” NASA stated. “The primary objective was to demonstrate the teams’ ability to safely evacuate crew members from the launch pad during an emergency situation.”

For the exercise, the teams rehearsed the situations on the 265-foot-level of the launch tower. During the demonstration, teams from SpaceX and NASA had to locate injured personnel and evacuate them from the tower using slidewire baskets. They then loaded the injured individuals onto NASA’s armored emergency vehicles.

As noted by NASA, the exercises were conducted in order to ensure that teams from the agency and SpaceX are well-prepared to handle emergency situations during the launch of the Demo 2 mission.

“The end-to-end demonstration is the latest in a series of similar exercises to ensure the crew and support teams can quickly evacuate from the launch pad in the unlikely event of an emergency prior to liftoff,” the agency explained.