NASA has just announced that the first operational manned flight of SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule will take off on October 31. The crew will consist of three American astronauts and one Japanese astronaut.
On May 30, SpaceX propelled astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS). A historic takeoff for two reasons. On the one hand, it was the first crewed mission to leave American soil since 2011 . On the other hand, the flight was for the first time operated on board an American capsule built by a private company. Last August, the two astronauts then returned to Earth, successfully ending this mission called Demo-2 which, as we recall, was only a test flight.
With this completed, SpaceX is now preparing to launch its first contracted flight. Initially scheduled for October 23, the takeoff of this mission, known as Crew-1, has finally been postponed toOctober 31 next at 8:40 a.m. (French time) according to NASA.
This new schedule will give ground and station crews more time to prepare for Russian Soyuz capsule launches on October 14 and 21 . NASA and the Russian agency Roscosmos will also be able to carry out additional tests to try to identify the small isolated leak in the station for a few months. For its part, SpaceX will also have more time to prepare its Crew Dragon capsule and its Falcon 9 rocket.
The crew members for this Crew-1 mission will be NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker. They will be accompanied by astronaut Soichi Noguchi, from the Japanese space agency (JAXA). Thus, for the first time, an international crew will fly aboard a NASA-certified private rocket and spacecraft. All will remain on board the station for six months .
As a reminder, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet joins the International Space Station (ISS) a second time in the spring of 2021 as part of SpaceX's Crew-2 mission. The announcement was made by Thomas Pesquet himself on his Twitter account at the end of July. If all goes as planned, he will then become the first European to board this new ship.
