NASA and SpaceX gearing up for Dragon Test
NASA and SpaceX are now gearing up for a March debut of the first capsule from a private company that is designed to fly astronauts to the International Space Station. No one will be on board for the crew. This will be Dragon’s inaugural test flight to the orbiting outpost.
Officials have set March 2 as the latest launch date for the NASA and SpaceX collaboration. If the demo goes well, two NASA astronauts will take a test flight in July.
It would be the first launch of US astronauts into orbit, from US soil, since NASA’s shuttle program ended in 2011. President Donald Trump mentioned the upcoming milestone in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address.
Meanwhile, Boeing, is aiming for an April launch of its first Starliner capsule. This launch too, will take place without a crew. The first Starliner flight with astronauts is scheduled to be held in August.
NASA’s commercial crew program has been delayed repeatedly over the years. This has forced a lengthy, expensive reliance on Russian rockets. Each seat on a Russian Soyuz capsule has cost NASA as much as $82 million. According to NASA, more time is still needed to complete testing, training and safety reviews.
Manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, Kathy Lueders, said the initial launches without astronauts are “a great dry run for not only our hardware, but for our team to get ready for our crewed flight tests.”
NASA is paying SpaceX and Boeing to provide the capsules and fly astronauts to and from the space station. This will allow the space agency to focus on developing a new capsule, Orion, and rocket, Space Launch System or SLS. These will be used for transporting astronauts to the moon and, eventually, Mars.
This NASA and SpaceX cooperation will surely help stabilise and uplift the US Space Program which has mostly suffered in the last decade.
