The successful Crew Dragon flight without SpaceX staff to the International Space Station this weekend took one exciting step closer to the day when American rockets once again ferry the country’s astronauts into space.
Sometime in the summer, both Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Boeing Co. plans to launch crews toward the ISS, ending a long drought in which the U.S. will have to deploy missions in Russian Soyuz capsules. NASA awarded them contracts worth as much as $ 6.8 billion in 2014 to fly U.S. astronauts to the ISS, cracking down on what is known as the Crew Trade program to avoid a monopoly.
Saturday’s announcement of the crew’s cabin from Florida and Sunday’s dock at the ISS marks “a major milestone for SpaceX and the country,” Taber MacCullum, chairman of the Spaceflight Commercial Federation, said in a statement. “This mission takes us one step closer to restoring American access to American astronauts, on American rockets, from American soil to the ISS for the first time since the Space Shuttle retired in 2011.”
SpaceX may get there first, in July based on how the test records are shaping up, with Boeing following just a few weeks later. In addition to the lucrative launch industry, both companies see space tourism as a source of future revenue. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg congratulated Musk in a tweet for reaching the test milestone.
“This is a huge milestone and shows how far NASA and the industry have come together,” Lori Garver, a former NASA vice-administrator, said by email. A thousand times more important, but the team can be very proud of this achievement – I know I am! ”
For SpaceX, the next big test will come later in the week. Crew Dragon, which would carry some supplies to the ISS along with a mannequin full of sensors, is being slated from the space station at 2:31 am New York time on Friday, and then back to Earth and showering. down to the Atlantic with the help of four parachutes.
Crew tours
While dates may shift, SpaceX at the latest schedule from NASA is conducting a flight stop test in June and then following up in July with Demo-2, a flight that will take NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to ISS. That is the final hurdle before the system is tested to enter the official circulation of manned flights.
NASA says Bolin’s CST-100 Starliner is continuing testing in preparation for the Orbital Air Test, slated for no earlier than April. If all goes well, Boeing would then have a starting pad movement test earlier than May and a crew flight test no earlier than August.
Beyond the test flights, Boeing and SpaceX were able to use their vehicles to offer space travel to tourists and others with the payment method. SpaceX is interested in flying Crew Dragon passengers as well as government astronauts but has not started looking for customers, Musk said Saturday at a news conference at the Kennedy Space Center.
Le Dana Hull