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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – The debut of SpaceX and Boeing crew is off until next year.
NASA said this week that the first commercial test flights have slipped from late this year into the next. SpaceX is shooting for a Dragon capsule, without anyone on board. Boeing is aiming for a Starliner capsule, also minus astronauts.
Those tests would be followed by crews next summer. SpaceX is targeting June and Boeing, August. That would be eight years after astronauts last rocketed into the orbit of the U.S.
Since the retirement of NASA's shuttles in 2011, U.S. astronauts have had to rely on the International Space Station. Soyuz tickets cost more than $ 81 million apiece.
NASA stresses these latest launch dates are subject to still more change.
"These are new spacecraft, and the engineering teams have a lot of work to do before the systems," NASA's commercial spaceflight development director, Phil McAlister, said in a statement Thursday.
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The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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