In some late breaking news, NASA announced on December 17th that the Crew 10 flight of a SpaceX Crew Dragon was being delayed from February 2025 to the end of March 2025.
The reason?
Its crew dragon isn’t ready. Briefly; SpaceX made 6 Crew dragons. 1 blew up after Crew Demo 1, one was built for the Inflight Abort Test and retired immediately after, leaving 4.
Crew Dragon Resilience was permanently modified to non NASA specifications( first a window, later an EVA support structure) and will only be used for commercial joyrides to non ISS destinations.
Crew Dragon Endurance is currently being modified with a window similar to the Inspiration4 mission for Fram2, an upcoming tourist spaceflight.
Another, Crew Dragon Freedom, is currently docked to the ISS.
This leaves only Crew Dragon Endeavor, which has exceeded its current amount of certified missions, 5, when it returned Crew 8 in October.
That requires a brand new spacecraft to perform the mission, and SpaceX is still carefully assembling it, leading to the delay.
NASA and SpaceX worked through the schedule of the upcoming crew rotations on the ISS and decided this was the best action, instead of using a different Crew Dragon spacecraft or other options.
This new Crew Dragon currently doesn’t have a name, known only by the designation C213. It’s first crew will give it a name, as previous astronauts have done. It’s likely to be the last Crew Dragon built.