Elon Musk‘s rocket company released new footage on Friday of its Crew Dragon capsule taking flight for the first time during a test earlier in May. The uncrewed test was designed to help engineers gather more information about the effectiveness of the capsule’s abort system — a key component used to quickly propel astronauts away from a failing rocket should something bad happen during flight.
The test appears to have gone well.
“It was a great, great outcome,” Musk said after the test. “Had there been people on board, they would have been in great shape.”
The two-minute video shows the Dragon capsule blasting off from its Florida launchpad, separating from its trunk and reaching a maximum velocity of 345 mph, according to SpaceX. The Crew Dragon flew about 5,000 feet into the air before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean under its parachutes.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon could start flying astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA as soon as 2017. NASA is hoping to buy rides for astronauts aboard commercial ships like Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 to end the U.S. space agency’s reliance on Russian vehicles to get people to the ISS.
