NASA announces date for first SpaceX mission with astronauts

New Delhi : NASA on Saturday announced date for first man mission by a SpaceX rocket to International Space Station. The flight is expected to take off in June 2019.

A flight on Boeing spacecraft is set to follow in August 2019.

The timetable for both launches has already been postponed several times, but NASA is keeping up to be in schedule with the help of monthly updates on deadlines.

"This new process for reporting our schedule is better; nevertheless, launch dates will still have some uncertainty, and we anticipate they may change as we get closer to launch," said Phil McAlister, director of Commercial Spaceflight Development at NASA Headquarters.

"These are new spacecraft, and the engineering teams have a lot of work to do before the systems will be ready to fly."

Currently, both the flights will be considered as test missions in which an astronaut will spend two weeks in the ISS before returning to Earth.

Depending upon the observation, NASA will plan to use SpaceX and Boeing to take astronauts to the ISS for regular missions, which last about six months.

SpaceX will carry out an uncrewed test in January 2019, and Boeing in March 2019.