Elon Musk Shares Simulation Video, Schedule Of Crew Dragon’s First Crewed Flight

The Crew Dragon is getting closer to its first crewed flight, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared a simulation video of how it might look like.

Should things go according to plan, American astronauts will finally get to the International Space Station (ISS) straight from American soil for the first time in nearly a decade.

Simulation Video

In a tweet, Musk shared a 2-minute simulation video of the Crew Dragon’s first crewed mission to the ISS. The short video begins with an astronaut already in a spacesuit on the way to board the capsule, then goes on to show the capsule taking off, separating from the Falcon 9 rocket and attaching to the ISS. The capsule circles the Earth a few times with the ISS before detaching and dramatically falling back to Earth, safely bringing the crew home.

This is, of course, the hoped-for outcome for the Crew Dragon’s first flight. Although the road was not easy for the Crew Dragon, particularly earlier in 2019 when an explosion during a test destroyed the Crew Dragon, the team working on the project persisted and the latest engine tests were quite successful.

Demo-2 Schedule

Soon after sharing the simulation video, Musk also revealed the tentative window for Demo-2, the Crew Dragon’s astronaut debut, which, if successful, would make SpaceX the first commercial company in history to send astronauts to space.

Originally, the Crew Dragon’s flight target was some time around November and December of 2019, but delays are not unusual for such major projects. According to Musk, the Crew Dragon would likely be physically ready by February, but it will possibly take a few more months to complete all the safety reviews. This was also the case for the uncrewed Demo-1 when the Crew Dragon was already ready for nearly two months before NASA cleared SpaceX for launch.

This means that if the Crew Dragon’s upcoming in-flight abort test proves successful, it is possible that the Crew Dragon will be able to launch twice in the first half of 2020 starting from the second quarter.

Should SpaceX succeed at a crewed 2020 launch, NASA will finally be able to bring astronauts to the ISS from American soil for the first time in nearly a decade. The last time that this happened was in 2011, and since then NASA astronauts have been hitching a ride to the ISS via Russian Soyuz rockets.