SpaceX is making news quite often, and also for the right reasons. It’s getting very close its goal of flying actual astronauts aboard its Crew Dragon spaecraft. This is after a successful in-flight abort (IFA) test in January. SpaceX, however, has not crossed any major milestones that is needed before flying people. This would be first on a demonstration mission, that is referred to as ‘Demo-2’ by SpaceX and its commercial partner NASA.
The working date is known to us now. SpaceX is now aiming the crucial mission on May 7th. It was well known that SpaceX was getting close to be misson ready with terms of spacecraft. There was a report released by the Government Accountability Office that detailed progress on the commercial crew program and also noted that the Crew Dragon capsule would be used to fly astronauts for Demo-2.
This would be Demo-2’s second demonstration mission of Crew Dragon, that would be followed by Demo-1 unscrewed mission, that flew in March 2019. The mission had seen SpaceX spacecraft fly to the International Space Station.
It would be a two-member mission on Demo-2, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken. Both of the are NASA astronauts, that would be completing their third spaceflight during the mission. With space, some kind of movement is expected in that target date, however as we are moving closer, the ballpark figure must be pretty accurate.