ORLANDO, Fla. _ Despite concerns for astronaut safety, NASA has announced it is moving ahead with the SpaceX plan to load the crew first, then fuel their rocket when the company begins manned missions using the Crew Dragon capsule.
"NASA has made the decision to move forward with SpaceX's plan to fuel the rocket after the astronauts are in place," said a statement released Friday. "While the agreement makes this plan the baseline for operations, it is contingent upon NASA's final certification of the operation."
The Crew Dragon capsule will be launched aboard SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A. In 2016, a Falcon 9 rocket exploded during a fueling process.
Despite this, SpaceX continued to push for the "load-and-go" method of planned launches due to the propellant used to launch its rockets _ extremely cold liquid oxygen that must be loaded right before launch. So when SpaceX's Commercial Crew Program actually takes off with astronauts on its first manned test flight in 2019, that's the fueling method.
"While the agreement makes this plan the baseline for operations, it is contingent upon NASA's final certification of the operation," NASA said in the statement.
That means at least five more demonstrations by SpaceX of the crew loading procedure before the first actual manned test launch.
The plan received scrutiny from a NASA safety advisory group this past May. The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel weighed in saying the method was a "viable option" as long as potential hazards could be controlled.
Both SpaceX and Boeing are prepping for unmanned test launches of their crew vehicles with manned test launches planned in mid-2019. NASA announced the first crews for those test launches earlier this month.
The current schedule has SpaceX's manned test flight in April 2019 with Boeing sometime in summer. Once NASA certifies either company's crew capsules, they will begin sending astronauts to the International Space Station.
NASA currently relies on Russia for launches to send crew to the ISS, but that contract ends in November 2019. Once certified, both Boeing and SpaceX would be on tap for 12 missions to the ISS, 6 each. SpaceX would launch from Kennedy while Boeing's Starliner capsule would launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 41 atop an Atlas V rocket.
