HONG KONG: NASA has ordered its first commercial crew mission from private, California-based spaceflight company SpaceX — an official authority to launch its astronauts from the United States to the International Space Station (ISS).
The space agency’s Commercial Crew Program has allowed private firms SpaceX and Boeing to ferry U.S. astronauts to and from the ISS. This is the second out of four guaranteed NASA orders under the contract, with Boeing receiving its first mission order back in May.
This commercial crew mission is poised for late 2017, but the exact date is yet to be revealed.
Commercial Crew Program manager Kathy Lueders at NASA said it exciting for the two companies’ spacecrafts to launch their first crew missions. She highlighted the importance of having at least two homebred capabilities “to deliver crew and critical scientific experiments from American soil to the space station.”
Currently, NASA does not have a primary space vehicle and needs to rely on the Russian Federal Space Agency’s facilities, costing $80 million to bring only one American astronaut into lower Earth orbit. The Commercial Crew Program allows the astronauts to reach the ISS on a vehicle made in the U.S. and at a lower cost.
The missions will take place on the Crew Dragon of SpaceX and CST-100 Starliner of Boeing. SpaceX’s system, which includes the spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket, has surpassed a development and certification process and has achieved “design maturity” in order to be assembled and tested for launch.
