Dragon pad abort launch
A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, May 6 on a test of the spacecraft's abort system. Eight SuperDraco thrusters mounted on the Dragon propelled the vehicle on a brief test flight to demonstrate its ability to escape its launch vehicle in the event of an emergency.

NASA and SpaceX plan to postpone an in-flight abort test of the crewed version of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft until after an orbital test flight, a decision they say is not linked to the June 28 Falcon 9 launch failure still in the early phases of its investigation.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...