SpaceX Confirms Crew Capsule Destroyed In April Test Accident

(Reuters) Joey Roulette May 3 2019 02:13 CAPE CANAVERAL Fla. May 2 (Reuters) - Nearly two weeks after a fiery explosion during a ground test of its new crew capsule SpaceX confirmed on Thursday that the vehicle was destroyed but neither the company nor NASA its primary customer have publicly acknowledged the nature of the mishap. Instead Hans Koenigsmann vice president of flight reliability for California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp known as SpaceX continued to refer to the accident simply as an anomaly - science jargon for when something goes wrong. The April 20 accident occurred at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station as SpaceX was about to test eight emergency thrusters designed to propel the capsule dubbed Crew Dragon to safety from atop the rocket in the event of a launch failure. Just prior before we wanted to fire the (thrusters) there was an anomaly and the vehicle was destroyed Koenigsmann told reporters on Thursday at NASAs Kennedy Space Center. There were no injuries. SpaceX had taken all safety measures prior to this test as we always do. The news conference was called ahead of Fridays scheduled launch of an unmanned resupply mission to the International Space Station using a cargo-only capsule built by SpaceX the private rocket venture of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.