The first flight of the SpaceX capsule designed to carry astronauts will happen in January
The first home-grown rides to the ISS are due to take place next year, the first since the shuttle program was shuttered in 2011.
Enter the Dragon: In a blog post, NASA announced a time line for commercial missions to the International Space Station for 2019 by SpaceX and Boeing. The first flight test of the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, the one that’s designed to carry astronauts, will launch January 7. A crewed flight carrying two NASA astronauts in the capsule is slated for June 2019.
Why it matters: NASA is in a hurry to get Boeing and SpaceX crewed missions up and running so it can shake off its dependence on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft. Time is looking pretty tight: NASA has only bought Soyuz seats up until November 2019. If it doesn’t get its own trips sorted by then, that would mean no NASA astronaut would be able to get to the ISS.
The latest schedule suggests it’s been hustling, at least. A report in July this year (PDF) from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) had estimated that neither SpaceX or Boeing would be ready to go until early 2020.
What’s next: After January’s test flight, SpaceX will have to carry out an in-flight abort test—making sure the capsule can get safely away in the event of an accident—with no astronauts on board. If all goes to plan, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will fly on SpaceX’s Demo-2 test in June 2019—the first astronauts to fly from US soil since the shuttle’s last flight in 2011. They will fly from the same launch pad that hosted the Apollo missions. Boeing’s own crewed capsule, Starliner, will carry three astronauts in August 2019 after an uncrewed test flight in March.
Keep Reading
Most Popular

Meta has built a massive new language AI—and it’s giving it away for free
Facebook’s parent company is inviting researchers to pore over and pick apart the flaws in its version of GPT-3

The gene-edited pig heart given to a dying patient was infected with a pig virus
The first transplant of a genetically-modified pig heart into a human may have ended prematurely because of a well-known—and avoidable—risk.

Saudi Arabia plans to spend $1 billion a year discovering treatments to slow aging
The oil kingdom fears that its population is aging at an accelerated rate and hopes to test drugs to reverse the problem. First up might be the diabetes drug metformin.

Yann LeCun has a bold new vision for the future of AI
One of the godfathers of deep learning pulls together old ideas to sketch out a fresh path for AI, but raises as many questions as he answers.
Stay connected

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.