Elon Musk's SpaceX Successfully Exploded A Rocket To Show It Can Finally Send Humans In Space

In its quest to launch humans in space, and eventually to Mars, Elon Musk's SpaceX conducted a successful test today -- a manual abort of the Crew Dragon capsule in its most dangerous phase of rocket-propelled launch from earth -- in association with NASA, hitting all the check marks in spectacular fashion.

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We all know that Elon Musk's SpaceX has pretty much perfected the art of reusing rockets, but this Crew Dragon test is probably the toughest one it has undertaken till date.

Part of both NASA and SpaceX's desire to launch astronauts into earth's orbit and beyond is to ensure their safety at all times, and arguably a space crew is at peak danger just as it lift-offs from earth and starts hurtling into the atmosphere.

Having a manual override to abort the mission, should something go wrong, is an essential security feature of any future space mission, and that's exactly what SpaceX demonstrated with Crew Dragon capsule's abort mission.

NASA

Launched on top of a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA¡¯s Kennedy Space Center, SpaceX triggered its Crew Dragon capsule for an in-flight abort, and it did so spectacularly well. Why is this important? The success of this test ultimately decides whether NASA gives Elon Musk's SpaceX the green signal to fly their astronauts into space.

Crucially, the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule abort test was conducted without any astronauts inside. and it was triggered 90 seconds into the launch when the capsule was under maximum aerodynamic pressure,

¡°The main objective of this test is to show that we can carry the astronauts safely away from the rocket in case anything¡¯s going wrong,¡± SpaceX director of crew mission management Benji Reed said in a press conference earlier last week.

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Elon Musk was obviously ecstatic, underscoring the importance of the SpaceX Crew Dragon abort test. By early reactions, NASA seemed to be happy with the way the test was conducted and the mission parameters.

This Crew Dragon abort test is believed to be the final step in SpaceX's journey towards finally getting the license to launch human astronauts in space -- something that Elon Musk has been building up to for over five years now.