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SpaceX and NASA are no strangers to launch delays, and the latest involves the first major test flight of the SpaceX crew capsule, the Crew Dragon. NASA announced on Thursday it has pushed the schedule for the Demo-1 launch into February at the earliest.

Crew Dragon was previously set to head to orbit on Jan. 7, but that date was reset for Jan. 17. NASA did not specify a new target date, but it says SpaceX and NASA are still completing hardware testing and joint reviews.

The uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station is designed to check how the launch, orbital, docking and landing systems function before actual astronauts take a ride to space inside the capsule.

Crew Dragon is part of NASA's Commercial Crew program, which also involves the Boeing Starliner. The space agency is hoping to bring astronaut launches back to US soil for the first time since 2011. Astronauts visiting the ISS have been hitching rides on Russian spacecraft.

The capsule and the Falcon 9 rocket that will launch it are sitting upright together on the historic Apollo 11 launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted over the weekend that the test flight will be "extremely intense" since there's a lot of new hardware involved. If the test flight goes well, then astronauts could take the first crewed flight on Dragon later this year.

NASA says it will confirm a new target launch date after coordinating with the Eastern Range rocket range and the ISS program.

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