Spaceflight Now by Stephen Clark May 12, 2020
NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be geared up for the long haul when they launch from the Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft later this month, but they won’t know exactly how long they will be in orbit until they are already aboard the International Space Station.
The Dragon astronauts, both veterans of two space shuttle missions, could live and work on the space station for one to four months, according to NASA officials. The duration will primarily hinge on how well the Crew Dragon’s solar panels hold up in the harsh environment of space.
“The minimum mission duration is really about a month, and the maximum is 119 days,†said Steve Stich, deputy manager of NASA’s commercial crew program.
The Crew Dragon test flight — set for liftoff at 4:33 p.m. EDT (2033 GMT) May 27 — will be the first launch of astronauts into orbit from the Kennedy Space Center since July 8, 2011, when the shuttle Atlantis rocketed into space on the final flight of the space shuttle program
More:
https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/05/12/dragon-solar-array-concerns-driving-duration-of-first-crewed-test-flight/
