Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. has decided to delay to 2018 from 2017 the first manned launch of its Dragon capsule intended to carry U.S. astronauts into orbit.
The company privately reported the slippage to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration earlier this year and confirmed it on Monday. The nearly one-year delay, to the second quarter of 2018 from the spring of 2017, comes in the midst of top-priority efforts to develop new launchpad fueling procedures affecting the company’s entire fleet of Falcon 9 rockets. A company spokesman initially described it as a slip of several months, but a NASA document indicates the initial manned mission had been targeted for April 2017.
Problematic loading of supercooled fuels is believed to be the cause of a catastrophic explosion that destroyed an unmanned Falcon 9 during routine ground tests in September and, according to critics, also poses significant safety hazards for future crews destined for the international space station.
More than a year ago, a NASA advisory committee quietly raised concerns about possible dangers stemming from SpaceX’s novel plans to fuel rockets while astronauts are strapped into capsules loaded on board.
The committee recently received an updated agency briefing about the issue amid unusual secrecy, but people familiar with the meeting said details about the most likely procedural changes weren’t shared.
Members of the panel, one of these people said, were asked to sign papers barring them from discussing the topic with reporters.
In an email on Monday, a SpaceX spokesman said: “We are carefully assessing our designs, systems and processes” to incorporate lessons learned and take corrective actions in the wake of the September explosion. The schedule change “reflects the additional time needed for this assessment and implementation,” he added. But in his comments, the SpaceX spokesman also suggested some prospective fueling changes are likely in response to the panel’s specific safety concerns. “As needed, additional controls will be put in place to ensure crew safety,” he said. SpaceX previously talked about adjusting fueling rate and pressure during ground preparations.
An update to NASA’s website Monday afternoon said SpaceX’s revised timetable targets May 2018 for the maiden manned mission.
The delay puts SpaceX, as the closely held Southern California company is called, on roughly the same timeline for beginning manned missions as Boeing Co., which announced a similar delay in October.
At the time, SpaceX maintained it was still confident its first manned flight would occur in 2017. The timing is significant because NASA is counting on the companies to replace Russian rockets and capsules, which currently are the only way for U.S. crews to reach the orbiting international space station. The agency hasn’t committed to purchase Russian seats beyond 2018, but it may need to ensure such alternate transportation if U.S. manned efforts slip even further behind schedule. NASA didn’t immediately respond.
SpaceX, which suspended all Falcon 9 blastoffs in the wake of the September explosion, previously said it hopes to quickly resume unmanned launches, perhaps by early January.
NASA initially envisioned the first manned launches of commercially developed crew capsules by 2015, but a series of technical hurdles and setbacks disrupted those plans for both companies. At SpaceX, over the years those challenges have ranged from problems with space suits to onboard life-support systems to leaks involving unmanned Dragon capsules that returned and splashed down, as planned, in water.
Further delays are possible—and may be likely, according to NASA’s inspector general—for both companies as testing of emergency crew-abort systems and other critical elements accelerates.
SpaceX’s single largest customer is NASA, which over the past eight years has awarded contracts worth more than $6.5 billion to deliver cargo and eventually, U.S. astronauts, to the space station.
Earlier this year, a report by NASA’s inspector general said agency program officials expected SpaceX to “encounter additional delays on the path” to safety certification of its manned transportation hardware. The report mentioned, among other things, that cracks discovered during fabrication of a tunnel designed to connect the Dragon 2 capsule to the space station already had delayed qualification testing by roughly a year. In addition, the report said the company faced “ongoing issues with stress fractures” in a portion of its propulsion system “that must be resolved prior to flight.”