SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Calls Crew Dragon Abort Test ‘Picture Perfect’

SpaceX CEO and founder, Elon Musk, is excited after the success of Crew Dragon in-flight abort mission test. In a press conference post-launch, he praised the efforts of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and SpaceX and called the mission ‘picture perfect’.

He mentioned that he has great appreciation and admiration for the engineers and researchers at SpaceX and NASA. On Sunday, the in-flight abort system of Crew Dragon was tested while destroying one of its Falcon 9 rockets.

SpaceX programmed Crew Dragon to initiate a launch escape about 1.5 minutes after takeoff. All crucial functions were implemented like engine launch, separation, parachute deployment and landing of the capsule. At 10:38 a.m., Crew Dragon landed just off the coast of Florida in the Atlantic Ocean.

“As far as we can tell thus far, it’s a picture-perfect mission. It went as well as one can possibly expect,” Musk said at the conference.

A team comprising people from the U.S. Air Force 45^th Operations Group’s Detachment-3 and SpaceX will get back the spacecraft to SpaceX center in Florida. Meanwhile, astronaut Doug Hurley shared that the past few days have been incredible for them.

“We started with a full dress rehearsal of what Bob and I will do for our mission. Today, we watched the demonstration of a system that we hope to never use but can save lives if we ever do. It took a lot of work between NASA and SpaceX to get to this point, and we can’t wait to take a ride to the space station soon,” Hurley said.

The Commercial Crew Program of NASA and the American aerospace industry have joined hands to develop new spacecraft and launch systems that can carry astronauts and crews to low-Earth orbit as well as the International Space Station. NASA believes that human space transportation services will help expand opportunities for discovery and research in space.