Commercial spaceflights — and an eventual trip to Mars — are one step closer to becoming a reality.
NASA on Thursday announced it has selected four astronauts to train and prepare for commercial spaceflights that will return American launches to U.S. soil. Astronauts Robert Behnken, Eric Boe, Douglas Hurley, and Sunita Williams will work closely with Boeing and SpaceX to develop their spacecraft and provide crew transportation services to and from the International Space Station.
"These distinguished, veteran astronauts are blazing a new trail — a trail that will one day land them in the history books and Americans on the surface of Mars," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.
In 2011, NASA's 30-year space shuttle program came to a close so the space agency could focus on bigger journeys, like a mission to Mars by the 2030s. It turned to private space firms, like SpaceX, to oversee cargo runs to the ISS, but transporting actual astronauts has been handled by the Russians. The appointments, therefore, look to end the nation's reliance on Russia for space travel.
"This is a new and exciting era in the history of U.S. human spaceflight," Brian Kelly, director of Flight Operations at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in a statement. "These four individuals, like so many at NASA and the Flight Operations Directorate, have dedicated their careers to becoming experts in the field of aeronautics and furthering human space exploration."
They will now work with teams at Boeing and SpaceX that are developing the Boeing CST-100 and SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, and help facilitate the crewed flight tests and certification activities required as part of the companies' contracts with NASA. The contracts require at least one crewed flight test with at least one NASA astronaut on board to verify the rocket and spacecraft system can launch, maneuver in orbit and dock to the space station, that all its systems perform as expected, and it can land safely.
To meet this requirement, the companies must provide the necessary training for the crew to operate their respective vehicles. Once NASA certifies the systems, the companies will conduct between two and six crew rotation missions to the space station, each one transporting four NASA crew members and at least 220.5 pounds of pressurized cargo to and from the orbiting lab.
Commercial space flight has not been without its problems, though. SpaceX has made several successful trips to the ISS, but its most recent attempt ended with an explosion shorty after lift-off.
For more on the effort, check out the video below.