NASA will allow SpaceX to use its cutting-edge technology which involves refueling the Dragon 2, the first manned spacecraft designed by the Elon Musk company, within 35 minutes before launch, with the crew already on board.
This August 18, 2018, Kathy Lueders, director of the Commercial Crew Program, from where the ship will be launched to the International Space Station (ISS), has declared that the decision to approve this plan was taken after “an exhaustive review “of the ground operations from Space X. At the same time, the official stressed that the determining factor to take into account was the safety of the crew.
On September 1, 2016, the Falcon 9 rocket, another creation from SpaceX, suffered an explosion during the preparations for its launch. Following this, the idea of filling the Dragon 2 after the boarding of the astronauts had been considered dangerous by the Advisory Committee of the ISS, according to its president, Thomas Stafford, in a letter addressed to NASA.
spacex.com
For his part, Elon Musk, responding to a question about this on Twitter, said that the crew of Dragon 2 would have survived an accident of this type.
In a press conference held on May 10, Musk rejected the doubts generated about his technology to fill the Dragon 2 and described the whole case as “exaggerated”, he told Spacenews.
According to the official Space-X site, the launch with its manned spacecraft will take place before the end of this year.
