Five additional missions will be given to Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, according to NASA (SpaceX). The flights will aid in crew transportation services to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract, the US Space agency stated in a statement on Thursday. By the decade’s end, SpaceX will have flown these five crewed trips to the ISS. NASA and SpaceX have an agreement worth $1.4 billion (about Rs. 11,140 crores) for these flights.
SpaceX has so far committed a total of 14 missions to NASA by 2030 under the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract. NASA has officially included SpaceX’s Crew-10, Crew-11, Crew-12, Crew-13, and Crew-14 flights in the new agreement.
All essential expenditures, including those for “ground, launch, in-orbit, and return and recovery operations, cargo transportation for each trip, and a lifeboat capability when docked to the International Space Station,” will be covered by the cost of the contract.
SpaceX received the first CCtCap contract in 2014. NASA also split this contract with Boeing, another private organization in public-private collaboration.
Boeing has struggled repeatedly to finish the development of its Starliner spacecraft, while SpaceX has been winning the NASA contract. For NASA, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft has carried out five crewed trips since 2020.
