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SpaceX Poised to Be First With Astronaut Flights, Beating Boeing

  • Crew schedule shows Musk’s company targeting April flight
  • U.S. space agency to name astronauts for each mission Friday

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket 

Source: SpaceX
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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.