SpaceX company, of which Elon Musk is the CEO, is working on many joint projects with the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The two companies had clashed a few weeks ago about adding more Starlink satellites to orbit. But now they came up with a big budget deal.
NASA increases SpaceX’s CCtCap contract to $3.5 billion
SpaceX has agreed with NASA on the Crew-7, Crew-8 and Crew-9 missions. As a result of the agreement, a huge fee emerged. NASA has awarded SpaceX’s Commercial Crew Transport Capability (CCtCap) contract to $3.50 billion.
Recently, NASA and SapceX have come together on many common grounds. The company, of which Elon Musk is the CEO, has been fulfilling the Crew missions since 2020. So far, the company has successfully delivered the Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the ISS, performing three operational missions from AileCrew-1 to Crew-3. Regarding the subject, Kathy Lueders, assistant manager of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, made the following statements in her statement.
It is critical that we begin to provide additional flights to the space station. That’s why we stand by when these missions are needed to maintain a US presence on the station. NASA’s human launch capability is crucial to building continued safe operations in orbit and a low Earth orbital economy.
NASA opened a separate parenthesis to SpaceX in its statement. The statement stated that SpaceX is currently the only American company authorized to transport crews to the ISS. NASA is working on a plan for the SpaceX and Boeing Commercial Crew programs to work together to fly astronauts to the ISS. NASA relied solely on the Russian space agency Roscosmos to get to the station. However, it is a matter of curiosity how this relationship will be affected after the occupation of Ukraine, which is on the agenda of the whole world.
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