SAN FRANCISCO ¨C The successful voyage of SpaceX¡¯s unmanned Crew Dragon to the International Space Station this weekend put the U.S. one tantalizing step closer to the day when American rockets will again ferry the nation¡¯s astronauts into space.
Sometime this summer, both Elon Musk¡¯s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Boeing Co. are scheduled to launch crews toward the ISS, ending a long drought in which the U.S. has had to hitch rides in Russia¡¯s Soyuz capsules. NASA awarded them contracts worth as much as a combined $6.8 billion in 2014 to fly U.S. astronauts to the ISS, splitting what¡¯s known as the Commercial Crew program to avoid a monopoly.
Saturday¡¯s launch of the crew cabin from Florida and Sunday¡¯s docking at the ISS mark ¡°a major milestone for SpaceX and for the nation,¡± said Taber MacCullum, chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, in a statement. ¡°This mission puts us a step closer toward re-establishing American access of American astronauts, on American rockets, from American soil to the ISS for the first time since the Space Shuttle retired in 2011.¡±
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