NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 crew members sat in the Crew Dragon spaceship during training. From left to right: NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Oliver and Mike Hopkins, and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi.
SpaceX
NASA and SpaceX plan to launch the company’s first full mission with astronauts no earlier than October 23, the agency announced on Friday.
Known as Crew-1, the mission will see three American astronauts and one Japanese astronaut in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. There, they will spend six months on the space station, conducting research and performing tasks.
The Crew Dragon capsule will carry Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi of JAXA. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will lift the capsule arrived in Florida in July to prepare for the Crew-1 launch.
NASA and SpaceX had previously planned to launch Crew-1 in late September. The one-month delay is due to “space travel,” NASA said, as a Russian Soyuz spacecraft is scheduled to launch to the ISS in October. The agency also said that the repeal of the Crew-1 launch “for a crew transfer” will board the space station. The six-month timeline for Crew-1 means that capsule will be docked until the end of April, overlapping with the SpaceX Crew-2 mission set to launch in spring 2021.
Demo-2 reviews continue
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavor spaceship splashes in the Gulf of Mexico with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on board on August 2, 2020.
NASA TV
The announcement comes about two weeks after the successful completion of the SpaceX Demo-2 test flight, which a few NASA astronauts conducted in the company’s first ever manned mission. The two organizations are currently reviewing data from the Demo-2 mission. Assuming no major problems are found, NASA will then certify SpaceX’s rocket and capsule system to regulate astronauts to the ISS on a regular basis.
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