Overview
- NASA announced Friday that it awarded SpaceX a $946 million firm fixed-price modification to its Commercial Crew contract to buy three additional crewed missions, raising SpaceX’s CCtCap total to 17 missions and $5.92 billion through 2030.
- The contract explicitly covers end-to-end mission services including ground processing, launch, in-orbit operations, return and recovery, cargo transport for each flight, and a Dragon spacecraft lifeboat capability while docked to the ISS.
- The award formalizes NASA’s continuing reliance on SpaceX to sustain regular astronaut rotations after Boeing’s 2024 Starliner test-flight problems while keeping Boeing as a second provider to protect U.S. access to the station.
- Separately, NASA opened media accreditation for SpaceX’s CRS-35 resupply mission targeting no earlier than October from Cape Canaveral, which will deliver final IROSA roll-out solar arrays and science payloads such as hardware to manufacture artificial retinas, 3D heart cell models, glass-formation studies, and brain organoids.
- Securing these flights preserves stable crew access that keeps station operations and science running, gives NASA flexibility to buy more missions later, and ensures astronauts have a docked escape option and the power upgrades needed for the ISS’s long-term safe operations.