Delay in Crew Test Flight – Update by NASA

First SpaceX commercial crew test flight is facing new delays. It was expected to take place by end of this year but NASA issued an updated schedule that delayed that mission to 2019. In October, NASA gave the revised date for the test flight of SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft was now January 2019. The agency had mentioned that the vehicle could be ready for launch in December and scheduled it for January to accommodate docking opportunities at the orbiting laboratory.

Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of build and flight reliability for SpaceX, gave a speech at the 69th International Astronautical Congress where he mentioned about his doubts that the mission, previously scheduled for November, would launch before the end of the year post which the delay was announced. He also said that “We’re working hard to get this done this year. The hardware might be ready, but we might still have to do some paperwork on the certification side of it. It’s going to be a close call whether we fly this year or not.” As per the new schedule the crewed flight test, carrying NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, will be done by June 2019. As per the previous schedule released in August, this launch was to occur in April. However the SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said that he hopes the mission to happen in the second quarter of next year. In addition to this, NASA had also revised the schedule for Boeing’s two test flights of its CST-100 Starliner. An uncrewed test flight, originally scheduled for late 2018 or early 2019, is now planned for March 2019. Earlier the crewed test flight was planned for the mid of 2019 which however is changed to August 2019. If everything goes smooth and the companies follow the new schedule and successfully carry out their test flights, then NASA is hoping to carry the first operational commercial crew mission in August 2019 followed by the second in December 2019. NASA will update about the new schedule time to time. Future updates will be released approximately monthly. Phil McAlister, director of Commercial Spaceflight Development at NASA Headquarters, said that “As we get closer to launching human spacecraft from the U.S., we can be more precise in our schedules. This allows our technical teams to work efficiently toward the most up-to-date schedules, while allowing us to provide regular updates publicly on the progress of our commercial crew partners”. He acknowledged that those updates could include additional delays and that these are new spacecraft, and the engineering teams have a lot of work to do before the systems will be ready to fly.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://spacenews.com/nasa-confirms-new-delays-in-commercial-crew-test-flight-schedule/