WASHINGTON –
SpaceX will launch five more astronaut missions to the International Space Station for NASA at the end of the decade under a contract worth $1.4 billion, the US space agency said on Wednesday, marking the company’s total contracted missions for its Crew astronaut capsule Dragon became 14.
The latest push for SpaceX’s contract with NASA is part of the agency’s efforts to ensure a steady flow of astronaut flights to the space station as Boeing BA.N, the other company with a similar crew contract, struggles to complete development of its space Starliner capsule.
The award “enables NASA to maintain a continuous US capability for human access to the space station through 2030, with two unique commercial partners in the crew industry,” the agency said in a statement.
SpaceX and Boeing won multibillion-dollar NASA contracts in 2014 to develop, test and routinely operate space capsule systems capable of sending astronauts to and from the space station, an orbiting research laboratory that has housed international crews of astronauts for more than two decades.
SpaceX’s reusable Crew Dragon capsule has flown five crewed missions for NASA since it was crew-certified in 2020, becoming the first private company to launch humans into orbit and reviving NASA’s human spaceflight program after the program’s retirement for US shuttles in 2011.
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule, plagued by software problems and valve malfunctions, aims to fly with its first crew of astronauts next February as it seeks to complete a final test mission before NASA can certify the spacecraft for routine astronaut flights.
NASA initially awarded each company six crewed missions, but ordered three more from SpaceX in early 2022 amid Boeing’s technical problems.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Richard Poulin)
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