![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/2018-07-30-184247.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAn announcement most have waited years for. NASA has officially announced the flight assignments for the first crewed test and operational flights of SpaceX\u2019s Dragon and Boeing\u2019s Starliner crew transportation vehicles. The announcements come as the Commercial Crew Program gears up for the uncrewed and crewed test flights of the first commercially developed vehicles that will fly U.S. astronauts to Low Earth Orbit and the International Space Station \u2013 marking a new chapter in human space transportation innovation by NASA to the commercial sector.<\/p>\n
The test flight dates: <\/b><\/p>\n
Ahead of today\u2019s announcement, NASA officially updated the new test flight schedule for both SpaceX and Boeing yesterday via the agency\u2019s website. <\/p>\n
The new dates include SpaceX\u2019s Demo Mission -1 (DM-1) uncrewed flight of Dragon launching in November 2018.<\/p>\n
That date matches Space Station schedule analysis discussion by NASASpaceflight.com in early July (an article that can be found here) relating to comments made by International Space Station Program Manager Kirk Shireman in late-June regarding the busy visiting vehicle and crew scheduled aboard the International Space Station between August and late-October and the need to see exactly when Dragon could be accommodated into that schedule at Station.<\/p>\n
Following SpaceX\u2019s uncrewed demo flight, NASA now anticipates that Boeing\u2019s uncrewed flight test, known as the Orbital Flight Test (OFT), will occur either in late-2018 or early-2019.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dragon and Starliner with the ISS. (Credit: Nathan Koga for NSF\/L2)<\/p>\n
Under the new schedule released yesterday by NASA, SpaceX will follow their uncrewed demo with the crew demo mission, known as DM-2, No Earlier Than (NET) April 2019.<\/p>\n
Boeing is then set to follow with Starliner\u2019s Crew Flight Test (CFT) NET mid-2019.<\/p>\n
Aerospace industry analysis (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n (NOTE: Last week, NASA\u2019s Aerospace Safety Advisory panel, ASAP, warned that Boeing\u2019s test schedule was largely in flux and not well understood until the company could identify and make progress on corrective action with the pad abort thruster system that suffered a failure in early-June. Therefore, the Boeing dates, according to ASAP, might be more in flux than SpaceX\u2019s.)<\/p>\n Impressively, the new schedules do not show a large slip for either provider. However, it is important to note that these new dates are NET targets and that both SpaceX and Boeing still have more work ahead of them before their uncrewed and crew demo flights will be allowed to launch to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n As such, readjustments and slips to yesterday\u2019s announced dates can be expected and would not be surprising \u2013 as is usually the case with the introduction of new crew transportation vehicles.<\/p>\n