NASA plans to add six more crewed missions to SpaceX, totaling nearly $1.7 billion.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States (NASA) issued a procurement notice, announcing its intention to add six additional crewed missions for SpaceX on top of existing commercial crew transportation contracts. NASA stated that upon the effective date of the contract amendment, they will immediately finalize up to three of the missions, with the remaining three to be scheduled as needed until the International Space Station is scheduled to end operations in 2030. The reasons for this additional task are very clear. NASA said that the decision was mainly made based on several factors: the recent reduction in duration of residency missions on the International Space Station, technical faults and delays encountered by Boeing, the mission assignment arrangements of the two companies, and the ongoing technical challenges faced in ensuring reliable crew transportation capabilities. Boeing's CST-100 "Starliner" spacecraft has still not obtained crewed flight certification, and the latest task list from NASA does not allocate any cargo missions for this spacecraft. The contract amount for these six additional missions has not been publicly disclosed yet. Based on an estimate using the standard cost of approximately $287 million for a single mission in 2022, the total amount of this contract amendment may be close to $1.7 billion.