NASA will use SpaceX’s Crew Dragon for two crew rotation missions to the International Space Station in 2025 as it continues to evaluate whether to use Boeing for another test flight of the Starliner spacecraft.
In a statement on October 15, NASA said it will use Crew Dragon for both the Crew-10 mission to the ISS, scheduled for February 2025 at the earliest, and the Crew-11 mission, scheduled for July at the earliest. Crew 10 will consist of NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nicole Ayers, as well as Japanese space agency JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. NASA has not yet announced the crew for the Crew-11 mission.
Earlier this year, NASA had hoped that the Boeing CST-100 Starliner would be certified in time to fly in early 2025. Problems with the Crew Flight Test mission, which launched in June with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board, led NASA to conclude in July that the spacecraft would not be certified in time. This led to the postponement of the Starliner-1 mission from February to August 2025, and the crew-10 mission to February. NASA also announced that in parallel with Starliner 1, it will prepare crew 11 for launch in August 2025.
“The timing and configuration of the next Starliner flight will be determined after a better understanding of Boeing’s path to system certification is achieved,” NASA said in a statement about the 2025 missions. “NASA is considering options for how best to achieve system certification, including windows of opportunity for a potential Starliner flight in 2025.”
NASA has not provided any updates on the feedback from the Starliner flight test, which concluded on September 7 with an uncrewed landing in New Mexico after NASA concluded that it would be safer if Wilmore and Williams returned on the Crew-9 Crew Dragon in early 2025. During the return of Starliner, agency officials suggested that they could still go directly to Starliner 1 despite engine problems and helium leaks on the spacecraft.
“We are studying the data. We have to make a decision: do we need another test flight?” NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy answered a question about the status of the Starliner data analysis at a press conference during the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) on October 16. She added that there is no timeline for completing this data review.
Another open question for future commercial crew flights is whether NASA and Roscosmos will continue to swap seats between Soyuz and commercial crew ships. Such “integrated crews,” with NASA astronauts flying on Soyuz and Roscosmos astronauts on Crew Dragon, are designed to ensure that both agencies are present on the station if one of the spacecraft is taken out of service for an extended period.
Currently, no NASA astronauts are assigned to Soyuz, except for Johnny Kim during the next Soyuz mission to the ISS, Soyuz MS-27 in March 2025. In August, Roscosmos officials released the crew lists for the next two Soyuz flights, Soyuz MS-28 in late 2025 and Soyuz MS-29 in 2026, which consisted entirely of Roscosmos cosmonauts.
At another IAC press conference on October 15, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson expressed confidence that NASA and Roscosmos would agree to extend the seat swap agreement. “It will happen in due time. It will be normal negotiations,” he said. “We fully expect the flights to continue to be integrated.”
The post NASA postpones the first flight of the Starliner first appeared on HiTechExpert.top.