NEW YORK: The four NASA astronauts chosen to fly on the first test flights of commercial spacecraft said Friday they haven’t come up yet with a more media-savvy name. The label, Commercial Crew Cadre, fits what they’ll be doing over the next few years, said Air Force Col. Robert Behnken, until recently head of the astronaut office.
Two private companies ” SpaceX and Boeing ” are still developing the crew capsules that will launch to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The U.S. hasn’t seen a manned launch since Atlantis blasted off on the final shuttle mission in 2011.
The first test flight with one or more of them on board is targeted for 2017, an aggressive schedule, according to astronaut Eric Boe, an Air Force colonel.
NASA named Behnken and Boe to the commercial crew effort Thursday along with two other veteran astronauts with test pilot experience, Douglas Hurley and Sunita Williams. Their first public appearance was Friday, a series of televised news interviews from Johnson Space Center in Houston.
When asked by an Associated Press reporter who wants to be first to fly, all four laughed and raised their hand.
“I think all four of us,” Behnken said.
But Behnken insisted there’s no sense of competition. “We’ve been around the office long enough to maybe have worked that out of our system, I think,” he told the AP.
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