NASA ordered five more missions with astronauts from Elon Muskʼs SpaceX

The U.S. space agency announced that SpaceX will launch five more missions with astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA. The amount of the contract is $1.4 billion.

This is reported by Reuters.

NASA stated such a move would allow the agency to maintain continuous human access to the ISS until 2030.

SpaceX and Boeing won multibillion-dollar NASA contracts in 2014 to develop, test and regularly fly space capsule systems that can ferry astronauts to and from the space station.

SpaceXʼs Crew Dragon reusable capsule has flown five crewed missions for NASA. But the Boeing CST-100 Starliner capsule still suffers from software failures and valve malfunctions, so it plans to send a capsule with astronauts for the first time in February 2023.

Initially, NASA assigned each company six missions with astronauts, but in early 2022, due to technical problems with Boeing, the agency ordered three more from SpaceX.

• Boeing launched the Starliner capsule three times without a crew. Two attempts failed. During the third flight on May 21, the unmanned Starliner capsule from Boeing docked with the International Space Station for the first time.
• SpaceX sent the first regular mission to the ISS on November 16, 2020. Then four astronauts flew to the ISS. Their task was to study the impact of space conditions on human health, grow radishes and conduct experiments for future extraterrestrial mining.