Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is set to beat Boeing Co. in the battle to be the first company to ferry American astronauts to the International Space Station.
SpaceX plans to fly Demo-2, its first crewed test flight, in April 2019, while Boeing's Crew Test Flight is now slated for mid-2019, according to a new schedule that NASA released Thursday. Both dates are later than the companies had been targeting.
NASA awarded both companies a combined $6.8 billion in September 2014 to revive America's ability to fly to the orbiting lab without buying seats on Russian Soyuz capsules — berths that cost about $80 million apiece.