Zoom / Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft are ready to launch NASA’s Crew-4 mission.
Trevor Mulman
NASA announced this week that it plans to purchase five additional Crew Dragon missions from SpaceX to transport astronauts to the International Space Station.
Although the space agency’s news release does not say so, it may be the latest flight NASA needs to keep the space station fully operational in 2030. No international agreement has yet been signed to continue. the station flew until then, but this new order sends a strong signal that the space agency expects the orbital outpost to continue flying for so long.
The announcement also suggests that SpaceX will fly more than twice as many crews to the space station as NASA’s other partner in the commercial crews program, Boeing. Under the new agreement, SpaceX will fly 14 crew missions to Crew Dragon Station, and Boeing will fly six throughout the life of the station.
Let’s do the math on the subject. SpaceX has already launched four operational mission missions to the space station, dating back to the launch of the Crew-1 mission on November 15, 2020. SpaceX has two more flights under its original crew agreement with NASA. In February 2022, NASA awarded fixed-cost contracts to SpaceX’s Crew-7, Crew-8 and Crew-9 missions. The latest announcement will lead to a total of 14 Crew Dragon missions.
As for Boeing, it has not yet completed an operational mission to the station. The company recently completed a largely successful unmanned test flight in May. Looking ahead, Boeing is likely to complete a flight test with a Starliner crew later this year or early 2023, and then launch its first operational mission sometime in 2023 or possibly later if problems are discovered during on the test flight with crew.
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“Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test-2 has gone very well and we hope to be able to certify the Starliner system in the near future,” said Phil McAllister, NASA’s director of commercial space, in a press release. “However, we will need additional missions from SpaceX to implement our strategy for each retailer to fly on alternating missions once a year.
NASA has not yet announced the purchase of additional Starliner missions. This seems reasonable, as Boeing has not yet fully demonstrated Starliner’s crew capabilities. But based on figures from this week’s announcement, it now seems likely that there will be no additional crew missions to be assigned to Boeing.
Why? Because NASA plans to perform only two space station missions with a crew per year, with four astronauts on board. SpaceX will have a contract for 10 additional missions, and Boeing has six in the books. There will be eight years of life left for the space station if it stops flying in 2030. Although further modifications to these treaties are always possible, NASA seems to have booked all the travel it needs to live on the station until 2030.
This does not necessarily mean that Starliner will fly only six manned missions. Boeing has signaled its intention to use the vehicle and private astronaut missions, possibly for commercial space stations under development. For example, Boeing is a partner in Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef space project.
But it is worth noting that currently Starliner is able to fly only with the Atlas V rocket of the United Launch Alliance. Boeing has provided just enough launches to complete its initial six Starliner operational missions to NASA before the Atlas V rocket is withdrawn. This means that in order to launch the Starliner into orbit, Boeing will have to pay money for the Vulcan rocket of the United Launch Alliance or some other vehicle. Boeing has not finalized its mission plans after Starliner’s Atlas V.
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