NASA confirms new delays in the flight schedule of commercial flight crews

BREMEN, Germany – A day after one of SpaceX executives expressed doubts about the fact that his company would be able to perform its first flight of commercial flight test before At the end of the year, NASA issued an updated schedule delaying this mission to 2019.

In a statement dated Oct. 4, NASA stated that the revised date for SpaceX's SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship test flight was now January 2019. The vehicle could be ready for launch in December, a added the agency, but scheduled it for January "to allow docking opportunities at the lab in orbit."

The announcement comes a day after Hans Koenigsmann, Vice President of Construction Systems Security and Flight Safety of SpaceX, said in a speech to the 69th International Astronautical Congress that he feared that the mission, previously scheduled for November, will not be launched.

"We are working hard to make this happen," he said. "The equipment may be ready, but we may still need to take some steps with respect to certification. Whether we fly or not this year will be an urgent call. "

The new schedule also postponed the flight test with the crew of astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley of NASA in June 2019. This launch was scheduled for April in the previous schedule published in August, although on Sept. 17, Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, said he expected the mission to fly "optimistically in the second quarter of next year".

NASA has also revised the schedule for the two Boeing test flights on its Starliner CST-100. An unsupported test flight, originally planned for the end of 2018 or the beginning of 2019, is now scheduled for March 2019. The test flight with crew, planned for the mid-year 2019, is now scheduled for August 2019.

This crew test flight will include NASA astronauts Eric Boe and Nicole Aunapu Mann, as well as Chris Ferguson, a Boeing test pilot and former NASA astronaut. At a briefing held on October 2, Mr. Ferguson, who is also Mission Operations Director for the Starliner Program at Boeing, said the previous schedule was exactly the same as the previous day. the current state of affairs, but the questions on more specific launch dates would be unveiled.

If companies abide by the new schedule and perform their test flights successfully, NASA has stated that it expects to be ready to conduct the first operational commercial crew mission in August. 2019, the second to follow in December 2019.

NASA, in its statement on the new schedule, announced that it would provide more frequent updates on launch schedules as the two companies get closer to their test flights. Future updates will be released approximately every month.

"As we approach the launch of a human spacecraft from the United States, we can be more specific in our timelines," said Phil McAlister, director of commercial space flight development at NASA headquarters. "This allows our technical teams to work effectively to meet the most up-to-date schedules, while allowing us to provide regular updates on the progress of our business partners.

He acknowledged that these updates could include additional delays. "These are new spacecraft, and the engineering teams have a lot of work to do before the systems are ready to fly."