SpaceX Crew Dragon unmanned test delayed to January 2019

The unmanned maiden flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft is delayed again. NASA updated its launch date schedule and says the SpaceX flight is now scheduled for January 2019. Earlier this month, SpaceX revealed the hardware should be ready before year-end, but that paperwork on the certification side might push the launch to the January 2019 timeframe. If things go as planned, the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission, with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, may launch in June 2019.

Rival Boeing is currently expected to perform its Orbital Flight Test in March 2019. NASA astronauts Eric Boe and Nicole Aunapu Mann and Boeing astronaut Chris Ferguson are training for a Crew Flight Test targeted for August 2019.

“As we get closer to launching human spacecraft from the U.S., we can be more precise in our schedules,” said Phil McAlister, director of Commercial Spaceflight Development at NASA Headquarters. “This allows our technical teams to work efficiently toward the most up-to-date schedules, while allowing us to provide regular updates publicly on the progress of our commercial crew partners.”

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As with all human spaceflight development, learning from each test and adjusting as necessary to reduce risk to the crew may override targeted launch dates.

“This new process for reporting our schedule is better; nevertheless, launch dates will still have some uncertainty, and we anticipate they may change as we get closer to launch,” McAlister said. “These are new spacecraft, and the engineering teams have a lot of work to do before the systems will be ready to fly.”

Whoever is first will have the honor of returning the US to manned spaceflight. Since the last Space Shuttle flight in July 2011, the US is using Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get astronauts to and from the ISS.