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NASA Tells SpaceX to Focus on Safety After Astronaut Hospitalizations
A crew of astronauts was recently hospitalized following a return to Earth on board SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.
gizmodo.com
A NASA safety panel warned SpaceX to focus on crew safety for its commercial trips to the International Space Station (ISS) after four astronauts were recently hospitalized.
During a meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel on Thursday, Kent Rominger, a former astronaut and member of the committee, highlighted a series of recent anomalies with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon crew capsule, SpaceNews reported. SpaceX has been NASA’s trusted partner for years, launching nine crews to the ISS on largely reliable hardware. The recent anomalies, however, might be the result of the company’s commitment to launching missions at an increasingly faster pace and to maintain its lead in the industry.
“When you look at these recent incidents over the last handful of weeks, it does lead one say that it’s apparent that operating safely requires significant attention to detail as hardware ages and the pace of operations increases,” Rominger is quoted as saying. “Both NASA and SpaceX need to maintain focus on safe Crew Dragon operations and not take any ‘normal’ operations for granted.”
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 recently returned from the ISS, riding on board a Dragon spacecraft. Following the spacecraft’s splashdown off the coast of Florida on Friday, all four astronauts were transported to a hospital and one crew member was kept for an overnight stay. NASA did not release any further information about why the crew was hospitalized or whether it was related to the Dragon splashdown.