NASA plans to fly a new crew to the International Space Station (ISS) on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on October 3, the press service of the American space agency announced on its website.

NASA teams for the Crew-5 mission to the ISS and the Artemis lunar mission test flight are working in parallel, and the planned dates will be finalized in the coming weeks. 

After the problems before the launch of the most powerful rocket of the Artemis mission, engineering teams are working to fix the fuel leak and NASA is ready for a demonstration test on September 21 and a launch on September 27, with a backup date of October 2.

NASA is ready for a test flight of a rocket to the moon

The SpaceX spacecraft will return the Crew-4 crew to Earth a few days after reaching the ISS with the Crew-5 crew.

Currently aboard the ISS are Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Artemiev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov, NASA astronauts Kyle Lindgren, Robert Hines and Jessica Watkins and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

The astronauts are scheduled to return to Earth on September 29 with the Soyuz MS-21 ship, BTA adds.

NASA