SpaceX receives firm order for its first crew flight

by Stephen Clark

Fresh off a major design review, SpaceX’s human-rat­ed Drag­on space­ship has received the first of up to six firm mis­sion orders from NASA under the company’s $2.6 bil­lion com­mer­cial crew contract.

The struc­ture of the com­mer­cial crew deals with SpaceX and Boe­ing give each com­pa­ny at least two — and up to six — oper­a­tional crew rota­tion mis­sions to the Inter­na­tion­al Space Station.

Those flights are in addi­tion to unpilot­ed and crewed demon­stra­tion mis­sions by SpaceX’s Crew Drag­on and Boeing’s CST-100 Star­lin­er cap­sules in 2017.

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