NASA to secure additional crewed flights to ISS from SpaceX

As part of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capabilities (CCtCap) contract, NASA intends to issue a sole source modification to California-based SpaceX to acquire five additional crewed flights to the International Space Station (ISS), which will help it maintain an uninterrupted U.S. capability for human access to the space station.

Under the CCtCap contract, NASA certifies that a provider's space transportation system meets the agency's requirements prior to flying crewed missions. The agency said that the current sole source modification does not preclude it from seeking additional contract modifications in the future for additional transportation services as needed.

SpaceX, which is currently NASA's only certified commercial crew transportation provider, will fly its sixth rotational mission for the agency in the spring of 2023.

NASA anticipates a potential need to use any additional SpaceX flights as early as 2026 to ensure dissimilar redundancy, and maintain safe ISS operations as the agency has extended the International Space Station operations through 2030.

"Boeing's Orbital Flight Test-2 went very well and we hope to be able to certify the Starliner system in the near future. However, we will need additional missions from SpaceX to implement our strategy of having each commercial provider flying alternating missions once per year. SpaceX has been reliably flying two NASA crewed missions per year, and now we must backfill those flights to help safely meet the agency’s long-term needs," said Phil McAllister, director, commercial space at NASA.

Additional flights will also allow both Boeing and SpaceX to work through any unforeseen issues that could arise as the private industry builds operational experience with these new systems, NASA said.