Crew Dragon Drogue Parachutes
When a Crew Dragon capsule comes home from space, it slows from blistering speed to a gentle ocean splashdown. The drogue parachutes are the small chutes that do the first half of that job.
Quick facts
- Crew Dragon carries two drogue parachutes and four main parachutes.
- The drogues open near 18,000 feet while the capsule is falling around 350 miles per hour.
- The four mains open near 6,000 feet, when the capsule has already slowed to about 119 miles per hour, and bring it down to roughly 15 miles per hour for splashdown.
- Drogues come first; the mains come second.
What it is and how it works
A drogue parachute (the word “drogue” rhymes with “rogue”) is a small parachute used to steady and slow a falling object before the larger parachutes take over. Think of it like dragging your hand out a car window: a small surface creates a lot of drag, enough to keep the capsule pointed the right way and to take the worst of the speed off.
The sequence happens in two stages. First, the two drogues deploy near 18,000 feet, when the capsule is still falling at roughly 350 miles per hour. Their job is to stabilize the capsule, keeping it steady and upright, and to begin slowing it down. By the time the capsule reaches about 6,000 feet, the drogues have brought its speed down to roughly 119 miles per hour. Then the drogues do their final task: they pull the four main parachutes out of their housings. The mains are the big canopies that carry the capsule the rest of the way down, easing it to a gentle splashdown of around 15 miles per hour into the ocean.
Why it matters
A Crew Dragon capsule, with its crew and cargo inside, is heavy. If the four large main parachutes were thrown open all at once into a 350-mile-per-hour airstream, the sudden force could tear them. The drogues solve this by handling the high-speed part of the descent first. They bleed off speed and steady the capsule, so that by the time the mains open near 6,000 feet the air is no longer moving fast enough to damage them. In short, the drogues let a heavy capsule reach a safe splashdown without ripping the mains apart. They are the difference between a controlled descent and a dangerous one.
Where it is used and notable examples
This parachute system is what brings every Crew Dragon mission home. It was used on Demo-2, the first crewed flight of the spacecraft, when astronauts returned safely to a water landing. It has since carried the regular crew rotations to and from the International Space Station, from Crew-1 through Crew-7. The same recovery system also served private missions, including Inspiration4 and the Axiom flights, as well as the uncrewed Cargo Dragon flights that resupply the station under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program.
