Astronauts will be sent to the International Space Station on a rocket launched from the United States for the first time since the Space Shuttle was grounded in 2011, NASA Administrator James Bridenstein said in an interview published on Monday.
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th August, 2018) Astronauts will be sent to the International Space Station on a rocket launched from the United States for the first time since the Space Shuttle was grounded in 2011, NASA Administrator James Bridenstein said in an interview published on Monday.
"Without question, by the middle of next year, we'll be flying American astronauts on American rockets from American soil," Bridenstein told USA TODAY in an interview at NASA headquarters. "We're so close."
The last space shuttle - Atlantis - carried a crew to the Space Station in 2011. Since then, NASA has paid Russia $82 million a seat to carry American astronauts into space.
The latest schedules show the private US company SpaceX ready to fly two astronauts - NASA's Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley - in April 2019, Bridenstein said.
Another US company, Boeing, is also developing a spacecraft to carry humans into space.
