Astronaut Randy Bresnik with Boeing's CST-100 spacecraft. Photo / AP
Nasa contracts two US companies to ferry astronauts to and from space station
Nasa has awarded its first private contracts for ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.
Boeing and SpaceX will take on Nasa's "space taxi" service after years of the agency relying on foreign countries. Since the retirement of US space shuttles in 2011 the only way the space agency has
been able to transport astronauts was by buying seats on Russian rockets costing US$70 million per person.
The new contracts are worth up to US$4.2 billion to Boeing and up to US$2.6 billion to SpaceX, which is run by Elon Musk, 43, who is also the chief executive of Tesla, the electric car company. Sierra Nevada Corp, a third competitor, with its Dream Chaser winged space plane, lost out. The flights are expected to begin by 2017 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Boeing will be able to take seven passengers in its CST-100 capsule. CST stands for Crew Space Transportation, and the number refers to 100km above the Earth, the start of space. The capsule will be sent up on an Atlas V rocket. In 2010 SpaceX became the first private company to send a spacecraft into orbit and then successfully retrieve it. In 2012 it made its first cargo run to the space station. It will alter its Dragon cargo capsule to take astronauts and it will be mounted on the company's own Falcon 9 rocket.
