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SpaceX's first SpaceX spacecraft, a capsule to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, has arrived in Cape Canaveral to begin preparations for its launch on a non-coded test flight more late in the year
. The launch date of the un-decontaminated demonstration mission remains uncertain as officials assess the availability of the crew's Dragon capsule, its unpressurized service module or main section, its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket and the availability from the space station to receive the satellite. [19659003] The most recent date officially communicated by NASA and SpaceX is for the take-off of the uncommanded pilot flight of the crew Dragon, called Demo-1, in August. But that will not happen, with the earliest possible launch date for Demo-1 now scheduled in the fall, according to many officials and internal documentation reviewed by Spaceflight Now.
Another test flight, using a second space worthy The Dragon spaceship is expected early in the year 2019. SpaceX or NASA have not yet released a definitive target date, and a SpaceX spokesperson did not respond to a request for a new schedule for Dragon Crew demon flights. The Dragon spacecraft assigned to the Demo-1 mission arrived at Cape Canaveral after conducting tests at NASA's Plum Brook station in Ohio in recent weeks. Inside NASA's gigantic test chamber – the largest of its kind in the world – engineers put the capsule in the extremely cold, airless environment so it could withstand conditions.
The tests went well. Cap Canaveral crews will spend the next few months equipping the capsule with sensors, parachutes, thrusters and other equipment needed for the test flight.
Janet Kavandi, former astronaut and current director of NASA's Glenn Research Center, oversees the Plum Brook Station facility, announced on Monday that SpaceX had completed the reverberant acoustic and thermal vacuum tests and that the Dragon capsule Crew was part of Ohio
The Dragon Crew spacecraft was manufactured at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, before going to Plum Brook for environmental testing, and finally to the Florida Space Coast for preparations for launch. The launch of the Demo-1 mission is almost complete at Hawthorne. The launcher is based on the improved configuration of SpaceX's Falcon 9 Block 5, which made its first successful flight in May, but the vehicle assigned to Demo-1 will begin redesigned high-pressure helium pressure tanks, containers under pressure that include the probable solution of a Falcon 9 rocket explosion on the launch pad in Florida in 2016.
Realization of the Dragon Crew Demo-1 mission and the first orbital test flight of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, built by Boeing, NASA's other commercial crewing supplier after Kirk Shireman, NASA's space station program officer, Boeing said in the manifesto of the space station that crews and cargo vehicles could determine when they will launch.
Shireman said on June 28 that the Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner steal flights would be "coming very soon."
"In the end, on the space station, we have progress vehicles, we have Soyuz vehicles, we ha Five outings in space," Shireman said. "It has to be in all these things, we just have to sit down together, agree when the vehicles are ready, when the certification is ready and when it's going to be part of the program plan." it's the job that's still ahead of us. "
" There are a lot of moving parts, "Shireman said. "A lot of moving parts are not the responsibility of one person, so we're all getting along and agreeing when all these parts are going to fit together and create the opportunity to fly. "
A report released by the Government Accountability Office on Wednesday suggested that further delays are expected in the certification of SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft
. In 1965, NASA signed a $ 4.2 billion contract with Boeing and $ 2.6 billion with SpaceX to develop, build and fly the CST-100 Starliner and Space Ships Dragon crew. At that time, NASA and its two commercial OEMs were expecting the new vehicles to be certified for regular crew rotation missions to and from the International Space Station by the end of 2017. [19659003] But technical hurdles and several redevelopments have delayed the first orbital test flights from Boeing and SpaceX until the end of the year, and astronauts will not take the capsules developed commercially before the flights in early 2019. Next, the results of the test flights will be lengthily examined before NASA While the most recent public screenings of Boeing and SpaceX indicate that they will complete the certification process by January and February 2019 respectively, NASA's own schedule analysis suggests that the step will likely come close to a year later. "In April 2018, the risk analysis of the schedule of the program revealed that there was no one at one or the other of the subcontractors the current proposed certification stage would be reached, "wrote the GAO in its report." The average certification date for the analysis was December 2019 for Boeing and January 2020 for SpaceX. "
NASA and Boeing have agreed to use the crew test flight of the CST-100 Starliner, originally scheduled with a Boeing test pilot, a NASA astronaut, to transport a passenger who would remain at board of the space station for a long stay of several months.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos and NASA have agreed to extend the duration of the next space station shipments to more than six months. to the NASA contract for astronauts sits on the Russian spacecraft Soyuz to cover crew returns to the ins until January 2020, several months later than originally planned.
These measures are aimed at reducing the risk of a lack of space for American crews. Norway has decided not to buy new Soyuz seats in the Russian government a chance for the US space agency to buy more seats for astronauts launched in 2020.
Once the Boeing ships and SpaceX fly, NASA and Roscosmos plan to put one of their crew members on each space station. This means that US astronauts will continue to engage in Soyuz missions, but NASA will offer the same opportunity to Russian cosmonauts on US vehicles in an in-kind arrangement, thus ending NASA's payments to Russia
. According to NASA's schedule analysis, crew rotation services will be operational until August 2020.
