The agency announced Saturday that NASA has begun the SpaceX Crew-1 mission by late mid-November. The mission will eventually bring three NASA astronauts and an astronaut from Japan’s JXA space agency to the International Space Station.
The six-month mission, originally scheduled for October 31, was delayed to allow time for resolving questions with the first-stage engine gas generator on the Falcon 9 rocket, NASA said in a statement. When unveiled, American astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker plus Japanese astronaut Sochi Noguchi will be aboard SpaceX’s first operational crew mission for the ISS.
Crew-1 is one of six planned missions that SpaceX plans to send to ISS under an agreement with NASA, which was awarded the 201 award as part of a commercial crew program that brought private sector companies into the US space program.
SpaceX’s first crew, the Dragon Flight, DM-2, or Demo-2, was a test mission that brought NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnek on a two-month visit to the ISS in May. The crew docked with the Dragon ISS and returned safely to Earth on August 2nd, providing NASA with the data needed to certify the ISS ‘regular travel with astronauts on future trips.
