Nasa has officially ordered a human spaceflight mission from a private company for the first time.
Boeing will provide a spaceflight for a crew of astronauts to the International Space Station, using its CST-100 capsule by the end of 2017.
The mission will not necessarily be the first private spaceflight for human crew to launch on Nasa's behalf -- that honour could still go to SpaceX, currently developing its own crewed Dragon capsule, and from whom Nasa are expected to order a mission in the near future.
It is also not a surprise; Boeing was awarded a $4.2 billion contract in September 2014 to finalise the design of its manned capsule, and to manufacture it as part of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) programme and Nasa's Launch America initiative. SpaceX was awarded a $2.6 billion contract to build its own crewed capsule to launch atop its Falcon rocket.
"This occasion will go in the books of Boeing's nearly 100 years of aerospace and more than 50 years of space flight history," said John Elbon, vice president and general manager of Boeing's Space Exploration division. "We look forward to ushering in a new era in human space exploration."
Nasa has recently felt the need for its own method to get to ISS more acutely, after the failure of a Russian Soyuz booster and the Progress supply vehicle -- neither of which were manned, but which have introduced delays on returning crew and sending supplies to the outpost in low-Earth orbit.
The Boeing capsule will launch in 2017 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Nasa said that the contract would be made two to three years before launch, and that going ahead with the mission was dependent on a lengthy certification process. "Each company must successfully complete the certification process before Nasa will give the final approval for flight," the space agency said. But it added the capsule had to show "design maturity appropriate to proceed to assembly, integration and test activities".
Both the Boeing and SpaceX capsules are designed to carry up to seven crew, though that number would usually be reduced to four or five plus 220 pounds of cargo. Each will fulfil between two and six missions, and allow the ISS to carry seven crew at once -- potentially doubling the pace of research.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
