After the Russian-US conflict,there arose some serious issues regarding ferrying of US astronauts to space. NASA today solved that big issue, by awarding contracts to commercial companies like SpaceX and Boeing.
NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said,
Thanks to the leadership of President Obama, the hard work of our NASA and industry teams, and support from Congress, today we are one step closer to launching our astronauts from U.S. soil on American spacecraft and ending the nation’s sole reliance on Russia by 2017.
The maximum value of the contracts are $4.2 billion for Boeing’s CST-100 capsule and $2.6 billion for Space Exploration Technologies’ Crew Dragon.
The new contracts are expected to greatly help NASA in carrying out its space research mission abroad. The space agency was almost paralysed due to the US-Russian conflict as NASA and Russian space agency had placed sanctions on tach other.
The contracts include at least one crewed flight test with at least one NASA astronaut per company, plus between two and six crewed missions to the space station.
