NASA gave its final go-ahead on Friday to billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX company to conduct its first unmanned test flight of a newly designed crew capsule to the International Space Station on March 2.
The approval cleared a key hurdle for SpaceX in its quest to help NASA revive America’s human spaceflight program, stalled since space shuttle missions came to an end in 2011.
NASA has awarded SpaceX $2.6 billion, and aerospace rival Boeing Co $4.2 billion to build separate rocket and capsule launch systems to carry US astronauts to and from the space station, an orbital research laboratory that flies 402 killometres above Earth.
“Following a full day of briefings and discussion, NASA and SpaceX are proceeding with plans to conduct the first unscrewed test flight of the Crew Dragon on a mission to the International Space Station,” NASA said in a statement announcing its decision.
