NASA Scale Teams to Launch SpaceX and Boeing Flights to ISS

NASA announced on Friday (3) the names of team members who will conduct the first manned tests of the new SpaceX and Boeing space capsules. These are the ships that will make the journey between the ground and the International Space Station (ISS) and the tests, scheduled for 2019, serve to assess if everything is right before releasing the operational missions.

NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken will be the first crew to travel aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, an updated version of the Dragon cargo capsule that should reach space at the tip of a Falcon 9. Once certified, its debut operational mission will feature Victor Glover and Mike Hopkins, also from the US space agency.

Boeing's CST-100 Starliner capsule flies into orbit via an Atlas V rocket manufactured by the United Launch Alliance. NASA astronauts Eric Boe and Nicole Aunapu Mann and their own crew member Chris Ferguson, former NASA astronaut, will be on the trip. Josh Cassada and Sunita Williams, both from the US space agency, were scheduled for the first operational mission.

NASA's first astronaut flight from the US in the last seven years

The teams were announced today (3) at a ceremony at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Early flights, both manned and unmanned, were scheduled for this year and later this year, but some extra capsule testing required new dates. Thus, Boeing is expected to launch in December and early 2019, while SpaceX plans experiments in November and April 2019.

Note that this will be the first time NASA astronauts have been launched from US soil since the end of the Space Shuttle program seven years ago. Lately, the space agency has been relying on Russia to bring its members to the ISS and has spent $ 80 million to buy a seat on the Russian Soyuz vehicle.

As the relationship between the two countries has been a bit shaky lately and the vacancies already acquired by NASA for upcoming trips sell out next year, flights with Boeing and SpaceX come at a good time for both the space agency and the United States.

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