Crew Dragon Flight Delayed Again to Late October
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
NASA has announced that the first operational Crew Dragon flight to the International Space Station originally scheduled for late this month and then late September has been delayed for a second time to no earlier than Oct. 23.
The Crew Dragon will carry NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker along with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi for a six-month science mission aboard the space station.
NASA’s explanation of the new schedule is as follows:
Crew-1 will launch in late October to accommodate spacecraft traffic for the upcoming Soyuz crew rotation and best meet the needs of the International Space Station. Launch will follow the arrival of NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos aboard their Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft and the departure of NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner from the space station. The launch time frame also allows for a crew handover with NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission next spring.
That sounds logical enough. However, a more probable explanation is it will take longer to certify Crew Dragon for operational flight than NASA and SpaceX originally projected.
Engineers are pouring over flight data and closely examining the Crew Dragon capsule that brought astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley back from the space station on Aug. 2.
The two-month Demo-2 flight test appears to have gone extremely well. Until everything is examined thoroughly and any required modifications to Crew Dragon are made and tested, NASA won’t certify the spacecraft to carry crews.
NASA’s press release follows.
NASA, SpaceX Targeting October
for Next Astronaut Launch
NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than Oct. 23 for the first operational flight with astronauts of the Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as a part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission will be the first of regular rotational missions to the space station following completion of NASA certification.
The mission will carry Crew Dragon commander Michael Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Shannon Walker, all of NASA, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission specialist Soichi Noguchi for a six-month science mission aboard the orbiting laboratory following launch from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Crew-1 will launch in late October to accommodate spacecraft traffic for the upcoming Soyuz crew rotation and best meet the needs of the International Space Station. Launch will follow the arrival of NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos aboard their Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft and the departure of NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner from the space station. The launch time frame also allows for a crew handover with NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission next spring.
The Crew-1 mission is pending completion of data reviews and certification following NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 test flight, which successfully launched NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the International Space Station on May 30 and returned them safely home with a splashdown off the Florida coast in the Gulf of Mexico on Aug. 2. Demo-2 was the first crewed flight test of a commercially-owned and operated human space system.
NASA certification of SpaceX’s crew transportation system allows the agency to regularly fly astronauts to the space station, ending sole reliance on Russia for space station access.
For almost 20 years, humans have continuously lived and worked aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies that enable us to prepare for human exploration to the Moon and Mars.
NASA is enabling economic growth in low-Earth orbit to open access to space to more people, more science, and more companies than ever before.
7 responses to “Crew Dragon Flight Delayed Again to Late October”
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It’s certainly plausible that more time than initially anticipated might be needed to complete all the certification work for Crew D2.
But the traffic story is at least as plausible. The “late September” original schedule for Crew-1 would have been quite close to the NG-14 Antares-Cygnus mission scheduled to launch Sept. 29 and arrive at ISS Sept. 30. Then there’s the Soyuz MS-17 mission scheduled for Oct. 14 and SpaceX’s own CRS-21 mission scheduled for launch on Oct. 30.
If CRS-21 follows a Dragon 1-type schedule of taking two or three days to reach ISS, then Crew-1, even if delayed a day or two, would still roughly split the difference between the Soyuz MS-17 and CRS-21 arrivals on its new schedule.
I suppose the same would have been true for a, say, Oct. 6 – 7 schedule for Crew-1 between the NG-14 and Soyuz MS-17 arrivals, but that would have been a tighter needle to thread by a day or two. Also, the skeleton crew now on ISS would be all tuckered out from humping several metric tons of mass out of NG-14 and stashing it all over ISS just when they need to be well-rested to receive Crew-1.
Better all the way around, most likely, to do things just as NASA has now set them up.
Yes, the ISS is a busy destination. Shows how difficult it will be to fit tourist flights in.
ISS tourist flights of D2 will have to be slotted in during intervals when one of the two docking ports will be open for a week or so. So crew hand-off intervals involving CC vehicles will be off-limits as two CC vehicles will be there simultaneously. So will intervals of roughly a month after each Cargo D2 mission arrives. But there will be suitable intervals available during times less busy than this Oct. and Nov. are going to be. NASA doesn’t seem to think it will have any problems with two such missions per year. Given sufficient demand, that number could probably increase a bit even before Axiom puts up its first module with additional ports. It’s going to be interesting to see just how much purely commercial demand for Crew D2 does develop.
It’s not one or the other, it’s probably both. The extra work and time needed likely pushed the flight into late October at the earliest, during which time there is a lot of other important things scheduled.
Certainly a possibility. Once it was actually underway in earnest, the remaining certification work was likely seen to be needing at east a bit more time than previously thought. It wouldn’t take much such slippage to make launching Crew-1 in time to arrive comfortably before NG-14 a non-starter. After that, it would have been a matter of where to slot Crew-1’s launch and arrival in among a cluster of other arrivals now kicked off by NG-14 rather than Crew-1 itself. Oct. 23 represented nearly a full month of additional delay but was apparently the best answer available.
I wonder if refurb work will delay C-2. The crew said the whole outside was burned including the windows. Starliner came back looking new. The only way too fix is to make Dragon in the same shape as Starliner. Too bad they can not get it going. It is the better system in my opinion.
Refurb of Crew D2 C-206 (Endeavour) isn’t going to delay the Crew-2 launch. Given that Crew-1 has been delayed roughly a month because of traffic issues at ISS, Crew-2 might slip a bit too. Crew-2, in any case, doesn’t have to fly until Feb. or maybe even Mar. 2021. Refurb and upgrades to Endeavour are supposed to be complete by sometime around Thanksgiving.
The Crew D2 windows don’t burn, they get streaked over by material from the ablative outer panels. The reason those panels get “burned” is because they are supposed to – they get replaced as part of the refurb processing. The windows will be cleaned as part of the refurb process.
If Crew D2 was made the same shape as Starliner, it would be too small. Starliner is about two feet wider than Crew D2.