SpaceX is moving forward with preparations for its next NASA astronaut mission, currently finally slated for a late October launch.
De Crew Dragon capsule that will launch the Crew-1 flight after the International Space Station arrived in Florida on Tuesday (August 18), NASA officials said in an update Friday (Aug. 21).
The spacecraft made the trip from SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and is now being processed at business facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Crew-1 will take off from NASA’s nearby Kennedy Space Center not earlier than 23 Oct. on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Related: A behind-the-scenes look at SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Hairstyle (photos)
The first stage of that rocket has been in Florida since July. The top stage is at SpaceX’s facility in McGregor, Texas, where it conducted a “static fire” test on Tuesday, NASA officials said. (Static fires are routine tests in which a rocket launches while remaining on the ground.)
Crew-1 is the first operational crew mission that SpaceX will fly to the station for NASA under a $ 2.6 billion contract that Elon Musk’s company signed with the agency in 2014. The flight will transport four astronauts: Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker from NASA, and Japanese spaceflyer Soichi Noguchi.
SpaceX already has one crew mission under its belt – the recent one Demo-2 test flight, which sent NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to orbit for a two-month stay. Crew-1 will last about six months, the usual stint for astronauts at the station.
Like SpaceX, Boeing is holding a commercial crewing contract with NASA, which will complete the aviation giant with a capsule called CST-100 Starliner. Starliner is not yet ready to fly astronauts; the spaceship must first make an unsatisfactory test flight to the ace station, a mission that will take place later this year.
Starliner attempted this test flight once before, in December 2019, but suffer a glitch in their timing system on board and was stranded in too low a lane to allow a meetup with the station.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
