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NASA will announce the names of astronauts badigned to the new Boeing and SpaceX commercial crew capsules early next month.
NASA. Reuters.
NASA will announce on August 3 that the astronauts badigned to the crew will perform the first tests and missions of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Crew Dragon, and will enter a new era in US spaceflight.
The agency will also announce crew badignments for flight testing of the crew and the first post-certification mission for Boeing and SpaceX, at a conference of press chaired by NASA's director Jim Bridenstine. In 2014, NASA partnered with Boeing and SpaceX to develop the Starliner spacecraft that will be launched on the United Launch Alliance rocket Atlas V and the Crew Dragon on the Falcon 9 rocket.
Starliner and Crew Dragon will launch American astronauts for the first time since NASA withdrew its space shuttle program in 2011.
The station is critical for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-distance space flights, and necessary for a presence sustainable on the Moon and deeper missions in the solar system, including Mars.
But, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of the United States, neither should be ready until 2019.
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