SpaceX's next astronaut launch for NASA delayed a week by 'visiting traffic' at space station - Space.com
Heavy traffic at the International Space Station (ISS) has pushed SpaceX's next crewed launch to the orbiting lab for NASA back a week.In photos: SpaceX's Crew-2 mission to the International Space Station.Crew-3 will launch NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer to the orbiting lab in a Crew Dragon capsule.The foursome will leave Earth atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for what is expected to be a six-month mission, a typical space station tour of duty.
SpaceX's Crew-2 mission, which arrived at the ISS on April 24, will depart "early to mid-November" after Crew-3's arrival, NASA officials said.The next crew exchange after Crew-3's will happen "no earlier than mid-April 2022," NASA officials said in the statement, "with the partner spacecraft and launch vehicle to be determined at a later date." This could mean a flight by a Russian Soyuz spacecraft or an American commercial crew vehicle. .For nearly nine years afterward, the agency relied solely on Soyuz spacecraft for crew transportation.
In the meantime, the agency worked on developing a commercial crew program, awarding $6.8 billion in 2014 to SpaceX and Boeing for future astronaut launches!