Though the US space agency paid the companies to develop their vehicles, Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon are privately owned and operated. So, unlike previous human spaceflight programs, NASA will essentially be a customer for the companies during their missions. Boeing suffered a setback when its Starliner spacecraft malfunctioned during an orbital test flight in December, and it’s not clear when the vehicle will be ready for crewed missions. Final certification for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, however, could happen in the coming weeks. Lueders said SpaceX will complete at least two additional tests of Crew Dragon’s parachute system. The capsule has already demonstrated it can fly into orbit and autonomously dock with the International Space Station: It completed an uncrewed demonstration mission in March 2019. And it previously conducted a ground test of its emergency abort system, which saw Crew Dragon blast itself off a launch pad to simulate how it could fly crew away from a malfunctioning rocket if something goes wrong in the minutes before takeoff. The company suffered a significant setback last year, however, when a Crew Dragon capsule exploded during a ground test of the vehicle’s emergency abort engines. SpaceX worked for the past nine months to address that issue and to finetune Crew Dragon’s parachute design. Lueders said SpaceX’s system has so far performed “very well” during additional tests. Boeing will not conduct a test analogous to SpaceX’s in-flight abort test. Lueders said Friday that each company is allowed to design their own testing programs, and “each of them have their pros.” “As long as it’s meeting our overall strategy, we allow the flexibility for each of the providers to propose what [testing] makes sense for their systems,” she said. Benji Reed, SpaceX’s director of crew mission management, said during a press conference earlier in the week that demonstrating Crew Dragon’s ability to escape a rocket during a mid-air emergency was important to SpaceX — particularly after an emergency abort of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft saved the lives of two astronauts when a rocket malfunctioned in 2018. Trust me... surviving a rocket failure by way of a successful abort system made today’s test personal. Thank you @SpaceX & @usairforce Guardian Angels! https://t.co/JQBRSJjLRQ