NASA bought five more SpaceX crewed flights
Despite the supposedly successful, with some reservations, test of Boeing CST-100 Starliner , NASA does not seem to believe that it will quickly reach manned missions using this spacecraft. Recently the agency has confirmed that it has acquired 5 additional ISS flights from SpaceX.
This new contract is in addition to the three-flight contract that SpaceX has received late last year. Then it was about $3.5 billion for 3 flights, i.e. now we can talk about the amount of almost $6 billion.
Crew Dragon Freedom is now in space as part of the Crew-4 mission. The Crew-5 mission on the Crew Dragon Endurance is expected to start in October 2022, followed by a private mission in the fourth quarter of 2022 Polaris Dawn on the ship Crew Dragon Resilience, sponsored by billionaire Jared Isaacman. Missions Crew-6 and Crew-7, as well as Axiom-2, Axiom-3 and Axiom-4 are planned for 2023.
Given the newly purchased launches, NASA has already reserved flights to Crew-14, if 2 launches a year, it is until 2027. If Boeing is able to resolve the latest issues to the CST-100 Starliner and finally move to regular launches, the date of completion of the extended contract with SpaceX may be postponed until 2030, i.e. the current date of completion of the ISS exploitation.