According to a 2019 report by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), NASA paid an average of $55.4 million per seat on Roscosmos’ Soyuz launch system between 20. Between the retirement of the Space Shuttle and SpaceX’s Commercial Crew Program certification, NASA solely relied on Russian space agency Roscosmos for transportation to the station. Its next test flight is currently scheduled for May 2022, when it will launch atop an Atlas V rocket to rendezvous with the ISS.Įventually, NASA intends for the SpaceX and Boeing Commercial Crew programs to work in tandem to fly astronauts to the ISS. Boeing also received a six-mission CCtCap contract from NASA in 2014, with a total value of $4.2 billion, but its Starliner spacecraft is still in its uncrewed testing phase. In that notice, NASA acknowledged that SpaceX is the only American company currently certified to transport crew to the ISS. human launch capability is essential to our continued safe operations in orbit and to building our low-Earth orbit economy.” presence on station,” Kathy Lueders, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, said in the agency’s notice of intent to modify SpaceX’s contract, published in December 2021. “It’s critical we begin to secure additional flights to the space station now so we are ready as these missions are needed to maintain a U.S. SpaceX’s period of performance now runs through Maa nice regular paycheck for the growing launch and space operations company. The extension is “fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity,” per NASA’s statement. Prior to the modification, SpaceX was contracted to fly three more missions to the ISS: Crew-4 and Crew-5 in 2022 and Crew-6 in 2023. The private spaceflight company has delivered, successfully launching three operational missions, Crew-1 through Crew-3 (plus one crewed test flight), to the ISS via its Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket since 2020. The original $2.6 billion contract was issued to SpaceX in 2014 for the development of American crewed launch capabilities, which had ended in 2011 with the retirement of the Space Shuttle. NASA announced today that it has officially awarded SpaceX the Crew-7, Crew-8 and Crew-9 missions to the International Space Station, bringing SpaceX’s total Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract to $3.49 billion.
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