NASA has cleared Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) through two more of its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) milestones, so the company's modified Dragon cargo carrier can begin pad-abort testing as early as this year. The U.S. space agency accepted the SpaceX human certification plan, which outlines everything the company plans to do to prepare for human spaceflight. That includes tests, demonstrations, analyses, inspections, verifications and training events, NASA says. It has also accepted the company's plan to fire a Dragon's SuperDraco abort engines in a test stand at Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, to demonstrate that the pusher-style abort system can lift a crew off a failing Falcon 9 launch vehicle. In that test the capsule will fly to about 5,000 ft., and deploy parachutes for a practice recovery in the Atlantic.
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