SpaceX and NASA are now targeting a March 2 launch from Kennedy Space Center of a test flight that could set the stage for astronauts to fly this summer.

The two-week demonstration flight of SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station, with no crew on board, had been planned for January and then February as the federal government endured a 35-day partial shutdown that ended Jan. 25.

Boeing, meanwhile, is targeting no earlier than April for its first launch of a CST-100 Starliner capsule on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, also without a crew. That's a slip of one month from the previous schedule.

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“The uncrewed flight tests are a great dry run for not only our hardware, but for our team to get ready for our crewed flight tests,” Kathy Lueders, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, said Wednesday. “NASA has been working together with SpaceX and Boeing to make sure we are ready to conduct these test flights and get ready to learn critical information that will further help us to fly our crews safely. We always learn from tests.”

If all goes well on the upcoming uncrewed missions, test pilots could strap into the Crew Dragon as soon as July — a month later than previously planned — and the Starliner in August.

Those would be the first launches of astronauts into orbit from U.S. soil in eight years, since Atlantis flew NASA's final space shuttle mission in July 2011.

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be the first to fly SpaceX's capsule. NASA's Mike Fincke and Nicole Mann, and Boeing astronaut Chris Ferguson, will fly the Starliner.

NASA did not specifically blame the government shutdown for the test flight delays, saying its partners worked through January.

SpaceX on Jan. 24 successfully test-fired nine Merlin main engines at the base of the Falcon 9 booster slated to launch next month's test flight, known as Demo-1.

NASA said the revised dates "allow for completion of necessary hardware testing, data verification, remaining NASA and provider reviews, as well as training of flight controllers and mission managers."

The space agency hopes the Crew Dragon or Starliner can be certified as safe to fly four-person crews to the ISS by late this year.

That's when the agency will use up the last of the seats it has purchased on Russian Soyuz spacecraft launched from Kazakhstan, which have provided the only ride to and from the station since the shuttle program's retirement.

In addition to the pairs of orbital test flights, both companies will test abort systems designed to ensure crews can escape failing rockets. Boeing is targeting May for an abort off a stand in New Mexico, and SpaceX June for an in-flight abort launched from Florida.

If the latest schedule holds, SpaceX's first Crew Dragon demonstration would launch from KSC two days after a crew including NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin blasts off to the ISS on a Russian rocket. Hague and Ovchinin survived an aborted Soyuz rocket launch last October, the first in 35 years.

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