SpaceX Won’t Be Launching Crewed Dragon Capsule Until 2018; NASA Disallows Science Gear Transport

The American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company SpaceX needs to forget about its space transporting services for now as NASA is firmly disallowing its spacecraft Dragon to carry Science instruments unless it can prove that it is capable to land in the red planet Mars without a glitch. This would have been SpaceX's first mission to the red planet Mars.

Although, Elon Musk, SpaceX founder is very determined about the company's plans to launch unmanned Dragon capsules toward Mars at every launch opportunity ideally next year, Jim Green, head of the Planetary Science Division, however, skeptical to thrusts millions of dollars' worth of equipment to the spaceflight company unless it can prove first and pull off a soft landing on the red planet, Space.com reported.

Reports added that even though landing in Mars posts hard challenges for any spacecraft on that matter, Green is hopeful that SpaceX will pull it off successfully since it does not only offer significant scientific returns but it opens up opportunities to deliver important science instruments in the Mars environment.

Meanwhile, Musk has also confirmed that it has decided to push back the first crewed launch of its Dragon v2 capsule in 2018, which was supposed to launch this year as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program following a launchpad explosion incident way back in September, Extreme Tech has learned.

The source also said that the delay may be due to the fact that SpaceX is planning to have a crew already aboard the Dragon capsule. Although the September launchpad explosion seemed to be an eye-opener of irregularities that might occur in space, SpaceX is confident that the capsule could very well escape unharmed should an incident of the same magnitude will arise as it has been testing a launch abort system that can blast the dragon clear of the rocket if an anomaly is detected.

While the company is very determined of this plan, the crewed launch of a Falcon 9-Dragon will not take place until May of 2018, but the unmanned flight of the crew-capable Dragon will still take place in the late 2017.