NASA has agreed with SpaceX to add five regular missions to transport crews to the International Space Station on Crew Dragon spacecraft to the contract.
This brings the total number of Dragon manned missions for NASA to 14. According to the contract, SpaceX undertakes to carry out Crew-10, Crew-11, Crew-12, Crew-13 and Crew-14 manned missions.
According to NASA, the additional flights will cost the agency more than $1.4 billion. The contract for the commercial crew delivery program to the station runs until 2030, and its total cost is now almost $5 billion.
At the moment, NASA has contracts for the delivery of crews to the ISS with two companies: Boeing and SpaceX. However, only SpaceX spacecraft have been certified by the agency, as Boeing is not yet able to deliver people to the station due to the unavailability of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft and other mission components.
Earlier in March, NASA added three additional post-certification missions on SpaceX ships to the agreement to make up for the missing number of flights that were destined for Boeing.
NASA also signed an agreement with aerospace company Axiom Space to conduct a second private astronaut mission to the ISS. It will take place in the second quarter of 2023.
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