We might not get to see astronauts fly in a SpaceX Crew Dragon until next year, but preparations for that highly anticipated test flight are underway, including a recent space fashion show.
OK, so there was no catwalk or runway strutting, but NASA did share a few photos of astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley going through their "suit-up procedures" recently at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
We've seen this pair before getting familiar with the Crew Dragon, but this time they donned their new suits for a full launch day dry run, including SpaceX's ground operators. The goal was to practice all the steps that will go down before a Falcon 9 rocket propels the pair from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to an eventual docking with the International Space Station.
Astronaut Doug Hurley suits up.
NASAInside the Crew Dragon simulator, the team also ran through several emergency scenarios.
Crew Dragon is one of two new spacecraft, along with Boeing's Starliner, that NASA has selected for its Commercial Crew program, The aim is to return human spaceflight launches to American soil for the first time since the end of the space shuttle era.
The Demo-2 mission to the space station was initially slated to happen in July, but was pushed back after an unoccupied Crew Dragon exploded during a ground test in April. An investigation traced the mishap to a leak in the pressurization system and the first crewed launch is now expected in 2020.