SpaceX aces key test for Wednesday launch of its first NASA astronauts - Business Insider - Business Insider

"We are now preparing for a launch in five short days," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said during a televised press briefing on Friday, later adding: "We are a go.".

Kirk Shireman, who manages the space station program at NASA's Johnson Space Center, said Roscosmos in 2019 made SpaceX aware of a "very, very remote possibility of a failure" with the Crew Dragon that might cause "catastrophic damage" when docking to the ISS.

"SpaceX said we understand, and we'll make a modification," Shireman added, noting the unspecified issue was resolved to Russia's satisfaction with the new Crew Dragon ship for Demo-2.

Kathy Lueders, who manages the Commercial Crew Program for NASA, also revealed that the estimated chance the astronauts might die during the mission — a figure called loss-of-crew — fell within a crucial 1-in-270 threshold set by the space agency

Whatever the risk of Demo-2 may be, Behnken and Hurley — who SpaceX's president and COO, Gwynne Shotwell, has described as "badass" dads, test pilots, and astronauts — said they're ready to fly

He added that, by working with SpaceX on Crew Dragon for roughly five years, he and Hurley have more insight into the ways the mission could fail "than any crew has in recent history, just in terms of understanding the different scenarios that are at play."