SpaceX President Gwynn Shotwell announced the end of production of manned Dragon spacecraft. According to her, the production of a number of components and parts will continue for post-flight maintenance.

The main resource of the Crew Dragon team will now focus on the next generation ship – Starship. To date, SpaceX’s space fleet contains six second-generation Dragon capsules: a pair of Cargos and four Crews. This should be more than enough to fulfill all existing and planned contracts. The curtailment of the former project most likely indicates that the C212 Freedom capsule is ready and being tested. The first mission awaiting this ship is scheduled for April (Crew-4). During it, four astronauts will be delivered to the ISS to carry out the 67th and 68th expeditions to the orbital laboratory.

For reference, the experimental launch of the Starship prototype was expected in late summer or autumn 2021, but there were difficulties in obtaining a license from the regulators, so it had to be postponed. First, the examination of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) failed to meet the previously announced deadlines, and then summarizing its results postponed the program until the spring of 2022. However, SpaceX wasted no time and in parallel continued its work under the new program.

The new prototype is supposed to put into orbit a test payload – a package of Starlink satellites. It is also known that the previous version of Starship will be equipped with a new generation of Raptor engines. All of the two hundred units produced performed well in ground bench or atmospheric flight tests.