The entire crew of the Crew-8 mission to the ISS, which was sent to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon, arrived at the hospital after landing.
The incident did not pass without consequences for Ilon Musk’s company.
SpaceX has been a trusted partner of NASA for many years. The company has launched nine crews to the ISS. However, its desire to launch missions at an ever-faster pace and maintain its industry-leading position began to affect its operations. During a recent meeting of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Committee, former astronaut and committee member Kent Rominger highlighted a number of recent anomalies with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and its crew Dragon capsule and urged the company to be more attentive to safety, writes SpaceNews. “If you look at these recent incidents over the past few weeks, it’s clear that secure operations require significant attention to detail as hardware ages and the pace of operations increases. “Both NASA and SpaceX need to focus on safe operations of Crew Dragon and not take any ‘normal’ operations for granted,” Rominger said.
As a reminder, the crew of the Crew-8 mission recently returned from the ISS aboard the Dragon spacecraft. After the craft crashed off the coast of Florida on Friday, all four astronauts were taken to hospital and one crew member remained under medical observation overnight. NASA has not released additional information about why the crew was hospitalized.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has also suffered several setbacks this year. Specifically, when the Falcon 9 launched the Crew-9 mission to the ISS on September 28, the upper stage failed to land properly in the ocean.
