The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) has announced that the next mission of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft will take place in late October. This flight, which will carry four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), will actually be the first routine operational flight of the spacecraft; its previous crewed flight was its final demonstration flight, designated Demo-2.

The Crew Dragon will be launched by a Falcon 9 rocket (also made by SpaceX) no earlier than October 23. This mission has been contracted by Nasa under its Commercial Crew Programme (CCP). Before the launch happens, however, the reviewing of data from the Demo-2 flight and the certification of the spacecraft must be completed.

The astronauts involved will be spacecraft commander Michael Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Shannon Walker from Nasa, and mission specialist Soichi Noguchi from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Together, they are designated Crew-1 and will spend six months on the ISS. 

The plan is that they will be replaced during the northern hemisphere spring next year by the crew of the second operational (and third crewed) SpaceX Crew Dragon mission. Crew Dragon missions will be alternated with crewed Soyuz MS-17 missions from the Russian space agency, Roscosmos.

The CCP is intended to provide routine crew transport into space, delivered by commercial companies, allowing Nasa to get out of the ‘taxi’ business and focus on its core mission: scientific exploration, whether of other worlds or of Earth itself, and whether by robotic or crewed missions. The Demo-2 mission was launched on May 30 and docked with the ISS 19 hours later, on May 31. The Crew Dragon and its crew of two astronauts successfully returned to Earth on August 2.

SpaceX was founded and is headed by South African-born engineer and entrepreneur Elon Musk. The other company involved in the CCP is Boeing. However, Boeing’s spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner, had an unsuccessful uncrewed first demonstration test flight in December, so it will have to have a successful second uncrewed test flight before it will be allowed to undertake a crewed test flight.