A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the Crew Dragon astronaut capsule, lifts off on an in-flight abort test , a key milestone before flying humans in 2020 under NASA’s commercial crew program, from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. January 19, 2020. REUTERS/Joe Skipper
CAPE CANAVERAL (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s SpaceX simulated a dramatic emergency landing on Sunday to test a crucial abort system on an unmanned astronaut capsule, the company’s final milestone test before flying NASA astronauts from U.S. soil.A Crew Dragon astronaut capsule carrying two test dummies splashed down off the coast of Florida after ejecting itself from a rocket that cut off its engines 12 miles (19 km) above the ocean to mimic a launch failure.
Reporting by Joey Roulette and Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Daniel Wallis