SpaceX Crew Dragon ship in anechoic chamber for EMI testing before being sent to @NASA Plum Brook vacuum chamber pic.twitter.com/BckUBkroLw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2018
Elon Musk has taken a break from digging holes in the ground to tweet a bit on SpaceX and the Dragon 2 crew vehicle the company is building for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Commercial Crew astronaut Suni Williams wearing a #SpaceX spacesuit while training with a mock-up of the Crew Dragon in Hawthorne, California
📷: NASA, April 3, 2018 pic.twitter.com/mnj3hvovsq
— Robin Seemangal (@nova_road) May 18, 2018
Earlier this month, Musk tweeted that the first Dragon 2 would be shipped to Cape Canaveral in about three months. If the prediction is accurate, that would be mean sometime in August. If his previous schedule predictions are anything to go by, delivery will occur later than that. Unless, of course, SpaceX ships the spacecraft earlier than Musk is predicting.
In any event, the spacecraft will likely require a lot of prep work at the Cape before it makes an automated flight test to the International Space Station. A second flight to ISS with a crew would follow before Dragon 2 would be certified to carry NASA astronauts on a commercial basis.