SpaceX has delayed the first two flights of its new Crew Dragon spacecraft by several months because the company’s development work needs more time, a NASA official said Jan. 17.
Crew Dragon, which SpaceX is developing to transport astronauts to the International Space Station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, will now have its first unmanned flight in August instead of the second quarter of 2018, said William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations. The first manned flight has moved from the third quarter to December.
Gerstenmaier, who testified before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee’s space panel, said such delays are “typical in a complex spacecraft development effort.” The Crew Dragon will lift off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, part of which had to be redesigned after a 2016 launch failure.
The Boeing [BA] CST-100 Starliner, which will perform a similar role but be launched on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5, remains on track for its first uncrewed flight in August and its first manned flight in October. But both the Starliner and the Crew Dragon are well behind their original schedules and could experience more delays due to technical challenges and “the large amount of work required of NASA to verify and validate that all requirements have been met,” Gerstenmaier told lawmakers.
NASA is funding both spacecraft to end its reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to transport crew to and from the space station. The last of the U.S.-paid Soyuz is slated to launch in spring 2019.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned that more delays for the Starliner and the Crew Dragon could interrupt U.S. access to the space station. NASA’s ability to buy more seats on Soyuz spacecraft is limited, as the contracting process typically takes three years.
“Boeing and SpaceX continue to make progress developing crew transportation systems to help the United States re-establish its domestic ability to provide crew access to the ISS,” said Cristina Chaplain, director of acquisition and sourcing management at the GAO. “But when the current phase of the Commercial Crew Program began, there was widespread acknowledgment that the contractors’ development and certification schedules were aggressive. The anticipated schedule risks have now materialized.”
Boeing and SpaceX currently expect to finish NASA certification of their spacecraft in January 2019 and February 2019, respectively. But Chaplain said the GAO projects those milestones will likely slip to February 2020 for Boeing and December 2019 for SpaceX.
Boeing is building the Starliner at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and plans to conduct a launch pad abort test in April, Gerstenmaier said. SpaceX is manufacturing the Crew Dragon in Hawthorne, Calif., and intends to conduct an in-flight abort test in October.