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In a few weeks, NASA plans to unveil which of the four commercial crew astronauts will fly from Boeing or SpaceX to the International Space Station.
NASA and its commercial partners will announce on August 3 that they will be aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon on Falcon 9 or the Boeing Starliner CST-100 on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine will make an announcement at 11 am at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Mark Geyer, director of the Johnson Space Center, and Bob Cabana, director of the Kennedy Space Center, will join Bridenstine and representatives of Boeing and SpaceX to present the crews, according to the press release.
Following the completion of the Space Shuttle program, NASA selected the Boeing and SpaceX commercial companies in 2014 to develop and launch new spacecraft for US astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
The Starliner and the Crew Dragon are being tested, with undiscovered test launches planned this fall. In-depth testing is all part of the certification process to launch NASA astronauts. The two spacecraft will leave Cape Canaveral.
The announcement of August 3 will clarify who will fly on which spacecraft for the first human test flight and the first mission to the ISS.
NASA has sent astronauts from the United States for more than seven years. The US space agency relies on the Russian space agency to deliver and bring back its astronauts from the ISS, and the contract with Roscosmos ends in 2019. If the spaceship of the commercial crew is not certified for human flight, NASA will have to renegotiate Russian vehicles or, for the first time in 16 years, an American astronaut will not live on the laboratory in orbit. The contract for these seats with Russia takes about three years, according to NASA officials.
NASA selected astronauts Robert Behnken, Eric Boe, Douglas Hurley and Sunita Williams in 2015 to work with Boeing or SpaceX and become the first commercial flight crew.
Beoing officials said earlier this week that former NASA astronaut Chris Ferguson will be the citizen test pilot on Starliner. Ferguson, now working for Boeing, commissioned the final mission of the July 2011 Space Shuttle Atlantis.
Ferguson told the Washington Post this week that he was the last astronaut to get off the shuttle.
"It's an exciting decision for our nation, our company and for Chris," said a spokesman for Boeing in a statement to News 6.
Ferguson will talk about his upcoming return to space at the event on August 3, said a spokesman for Boeing.
The commercial crew astronauts began performing drills and simulations in SpaceX and Boeing spacecraft models at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston in April.
Depending on their spaceship, astronauts of the commercial crew will wear space suits designed by the corresponding company. Both companies reveled in their costumes last year.
The "Boeing blue" costume is characterized by mobility and Reebok boots. The entire suit weighs 20 pounds, half the weight of NASA's current space suit, according to Boeing officials.
The astronauts of the Dragon crew will wear elegant and mostly white space suits. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said it was "incredibly difficult" to balance the functions and aesthetics of hardware that would fulfill one of SpaceX's key obligations towards the program. Commercial crew of NASA.
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