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Bolden: NASA Wants Multiple Carriers to International Space Station


June 18, 2014 | WMFE, Orlando -- NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden says the space agency wants more than one space company launching astronauts to the International Space Station. Bolden made the announcement Wednesday at Kennedy Space Center.

[Photo: Orion is NASA's first new spacecraft in a generation. By Amy Green]

NASA is getting out of the business of taking astronauts to the International Space Station so it can concentrate on sending astronauts to an asteroid and Mars.

Bolden says the budget will determine whether the space agency can contract with more than one space company.

"Our desire is to have multiple providers. Why? Because it maintains competition so it holds the cost down. It gives us reliability and redundancy."

NASA is expected to announce in August the space company or companies that will replace the shuttle program in taking astronauts to the ISS.

Three companies are competing: SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada.

Astronauts have flown with Russia since the shuttle program ended in 2011. 

Bolden made the announcement during a media tour of Orion, NASA's first new spacecraft in a generation designed to take astronauts to an asteroid and Mars. 

"We are well on our way to establishing a human presence in our solar system, and when we leave planet Earth to do it we're going to be leaving from right here at the Kennedy Space Center," says Bob Cabana, director of Kennedy Space Center.

Orion's test flight in December is its first. The four-hour mission will be unmanned. The spacecraft will orbit the Earth twice, venturing farther than humans have gone in 40 years.

It'll re-enter the atmosphere at 20-thousand miles an hour and splash down in the Pacific Ocean.

In the coming months engineers will be testing Orion's heat shield and parachutes.

 

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