After the SpaceX rocket accident, the NASA manned space mission was postponed to October 3: including Russian astronauts

CTOnews.com, August 27 (Xinhua)-- Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have confirmed the company's fifth space launch mission on October 3, which will also mark the first time that Russian astronauts will travel to the International Space Station in the Crew Dragon manned dragon spacecraft.

NASA announced in July that SpaceX's Crew-5 launch was scheduled for early September, but the launch was delayed until the end of September because the company accidentally crashed a new Falcon 9 rocket booster into a bridge.

For SpaceX, the accident only slightly damaged the top of the booster, which was easily resolved by changing stages, but unplanned repairs still took time, so qualification tests in Texas were postponed.

In the end, the accident delayed the NASA mission by about a month. NASA and SpaceX now set the date as 12:55 est (00:55 Beijing time) on October 3 to ensure the extra separation of the busy International Space Station (ISS) from "spacecraft traffic".

CTOnews.com learned that Crew-5 will be SpaceX's eighth manned space mission, the seventh mission to send astronauts to the space station, and NASA's sixth astronaut transport mission.

After docking with the International Space Station, Crew-5 will replace Crew-4, and astronauts returning to the region will also leave the station on their own Crew Dragon and return to Earth sometime in October.

"the SpaceX rocket crashed in transit: it hit a bridge, and NASA said it was assessing the damage."