NASA orders five more astronaut missions from Musk’s SpaceX

SpaceX will launch 5 extra astronaut missions to the Worldwide Area Station for NASA on the finish of the last decade below a $1.4 billion contract order, the U.S. area company mentioned Wednesday, taking the corporate’s whole contracted missions for its Crew Dragon astronaut capsule to 14.

The newest enhance to SpaceX’s NASA contract is a part of the company’s effort to make sure a gentle run of astronaut flights to the area station as Boeing, the opposite firm with the same crew transportation contract, has struggled to finish improvement of its Starliner area capsule.

The award “permits NASA to take care of an uninterrupted U.S. functionality for human entry to the area station till 2030, with two distinctive industrial crew business companions,” the company mentioned in an announcement.

SpaceX and Boeing every gained multibillion-dollar NASA contracts in 2014 to develop, check and routinely fly area capsule techniques able to sending astronauts to and from the area station, an orbital analysis lab that has housed worldwide crews of astronauts for over twenty years.

SpaceX’s reusable Crew Dragon capsule has flown 5 crewed missions for NASA because it was crew-certified in 2020, when it turned the primary personal firm to launch people into orbit and revived NASA’s human spaceflight program after the U.S. shuttle program retired in 2011.

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule, beset by software program glitches and valve malfunctions, goals to fly its first crew of astronauts in February subsequent yr, trying to go a last check mission earlier than NASA can certify the spacecraft for routine astronaut flights.

NASA initially awarded every firm six crew missions, however ordered three extra from SpaceX in early 2022 amid Boeing’s technical woes.