SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
SpaceX’s first astronaut mission could take off in May
SpaceX is getting very close to its goal of flying actual astronauts aboard its Crew Dragon spacecraft. After a successful in-flight abort (IFA) test in January, it had basically crossed off all the major milestones needed before flying people, first on a demonstration mission referred to as “Demo-2” by SpaceX and its commercial crew partner NASA.
We now know the working date that SpaceX is aiming for with that crucial mission: May 7. To be clear, that’s very much a working date and the actual mission could slip either later, or even earlier, according to Ars Technica’s Eric Berger who first reported the timeline.
It will be exciting when the United States regains the capability to send humans to orbit and to the ISS.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday February 11 2020, @04:08PM
Per the contract and subsequent press releases, the flight will launch Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on a trajectory to rendezvous with the ISS where the spacecraft will automatically dock and the crew will join the current ISS expedition. The spacecraft and crew are scheduled to return to Earth for a soft splashdown after 14 days.
There was some discussion of extending the mission length to allow this mission to serve as a full crew rotation, but that hasn't been confirmed.
</fact><opinion>
If the mission was going to be extended it likely would have leaked by now. A lot of planning goes into stuff like that, and it's not something you change a few months before go. The ISS crew rotation will fly on the April 9 Soyuz instead.