SpaceX is creating ahead with preparations for its next NASA astronaut mission, currently slated for a late October launch.
The Crew Dragon pill that will launch the Crew-1 flight to the International Space Station got here in Florida on Tuesday (Aug. 18), NASA officials said in an update Friday (Aug. 21).
The spacecraft made the trip from SpaceXs head office in Hawthorne, California, and is now being processed at company facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Crew-1 will take off from NASAs close-by Kennedy Space Center no earlier than Oct. 23 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Related: A behind-the-scenes appearance at SpaceXs Crew Dragon capsule (pictures).
The very first stage of that rocket has actually remained in Florida given that July. The upper stage is at SpaceXs center in McGregor, Texas, where it carried out a “static fire” test on Tuesday, NASA officials stated. (Static fires are regular trials in which a rocket fires up while staying tethered to the ground.).
Crew-1 is the very first operational crewed objective that SpaceX will fly to the station for NASA under a $2.6 billion agreement that Elon Musks company signed with the company in 2014. The flight will carry 4 astronauts: NASAs Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japanese spaceflyer Soichi Noguchi.
The upper stage is at SpaceXs center in McGregor, Texas, where it carried out a “static fire” test on Tuesday, NASA authorities said. SpaceXs Crew-1 objective, its very first fully crewed, completely operational Crew Dragon objective to the International Space Station, is tailoring up to introduce no faster than Oct. 23, 2020. From the left you can see NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi. (Image credit: SpaceX/NASA) SpaceX already has one crewed mission under its belt– the current Demo-2 test flight, which sent NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the orbiting lab for a two-month stay.
SpaceXs Crew-1 mission, its very first totally crewed, completely functional Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station, is tailoring up to release no quicker than Oct. 23, 2020. (Image credit: SpaceX/NASA) SpaceX already has one crewed objective under its belt– the recent Demo-2 test flight, which sent out NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the orbiting laboratory for a two-month stay.
Like SpaceX, Boeing holds a commercial crew agreement with NASA, which the aerospace giant will satisfy utilizing a capsule called CST-100 Starliner. Starliner is not yet all set to fly astronauts; the spacecraft needs to initially ace an uncrewed test flight to the station, an objective set up to happen later on this year..
Starliner tried this test flight once in the past, in December 2019, however suffered a problem in its onboard timing system and got stranded in an orbit too low to allow a meetup with the station.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; shown by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook..
