SpaceX Crew-1 mission, which is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, will be launched no earlier than October 23. The mission will carry astronauts of the Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station.
NASA in a statement said the lift-off for late October is to accommodate spacecraft traffic for the upcoming Soyuz crew rotation and best meet the needs of the International Space Station. Crew-1 will launch after NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov, and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov arrive at the space station aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-17 craft. Crew-1’s lift-off will also follow the departure of NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner from the station, it said.
Crew-1 is slated to follow the success of SpaceX’s historic Demo-2 mission, which is the first orbital crewed flight test of a commercially owned and operated human spacecraft. It carried NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Dough Hurley to and from the space station aboard a Crew Dragon capsule.
NASA said Crew-1 mission is pending completion of data reviews and certification. NASA’s certification of SpaceX’s crew transportation system allows the agency to regularly fly astronauts to the space station, ending sole reliance on Russia for space station access.
The space agency took to commercial space flights after retiring its space shuttles in 2011. Thanks to SpaceX, NASA can now launch astronauts from its home shores rather than paying for seats aboard Russian spacecraft. The space agency can buy seats on Crew Dragon. Reports say that in the new Commercial Crew model, SpaceX retains ownership and operational control of its spacecraft. “We want to send all kinds of people to space,” said Benji Reed, director of crew mission management at SpaceX. “Everything we are doing is to open that new chapter in the space age.”
Pingback: 2 Indian school girls from Surat spot space rock ‘Mars -Crosser’ that NASA scientists couldn’t