Boeing completes Commercial Crew milestone

Boeing has completed its last milestone in the development program that preceded its win of a NASA contract to fly astronauts to the International Space Station.

Boeing is the first of the three companies that contended for the contracts to finish its work under a competition phase called Commercial Crew Integrated Capability, or iCap, during which Boeing earned $480 million.

NASA last week said a design review confirmed that Boeing was ready to proceed with building and testing of its CST-100 crew capsule, which will launch from Cape Canaveral on United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket.

NASA last month also awarded SpaceX a Commercial Crew contract worth up to $2.6 billion. SpaceX expects to complete its iCap milestones next year, as does Sierra Nevada Corp., which is protesting its loss in the competition for a contract to fly astronauts.

NASA hopes one of the companies is ready to fly astronauts from Cape Canaveral to the ISS by 2017.

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