NASA has announced five new missions to Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX). The US space agency noted in a brief on Thursday that the mission will help with crew transport services to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract. These five crewed missions from SpaceX to the ISS will be launched by the end of the decade. NASA has signed a $1.4 billion (about Rs 11,140 crore) contract with SpaceX for these missions.
Under the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract, SpaceX has so far dedicated a total of 14 missions to NASA through 2030. in an officer Announcement Regarding the new deal, NASA has added SpaceX’s Crew-10, Crew-11, Crew-12, Crew-13 and Crew-14 flights.
The cost of the contract will include “all necessary expenses including ground, launch, in-orbit, and return and recovery operations, cargo transportation for each mission, and a lifeboat capability during docking to the International Space Station.”
The CCTcap contract was first awarded to SpaceX in 2014. NASA also shared this contract with another private agency, Boeing, in a public-private partnership.
While Boeing has repeatedly faced issues completing development of its Starliner space capsule, SpaceX has won the bid for NASA. Since 2020, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule has flown five crewed missions for NASA.
