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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