NASA awards SpaceX three more Crew Dragon flights for $946 million
NASA modified SpaceX's Commercial Crew contract to add Crew-15, Crew-16, and Crew-17 for $946 million.
what happened
NASA said Sept. 18 it modified SpaceX's Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract to add three more space station missions, Crew-15, Crew-16, and Crew-17, for $946 million covering all three missions and related mission services, per NASA's own release. The amount includes ground, launch, in-orbit, and return and recovery operations, cargo transportation for each mission, and a lifeboat capability while docked to the International Space Station. The period of performance runs through 2030, and the modification brings NASA's total CCtCap contract value with SpaceX to $5.92 billion.
why it matters
The award keeps SpaceX as NASA's workhorse crew-transport provider through the station's remaining operational life, at a moment when Boeing's Starliner has yet to fly an operational rotation and SpaceX itself has signaled it eventually wants to retire Crew Dragon for Starship. A firm order through 2030 gives SpaceX predictable crew-transport revenue and keeps the ISS crew-rotation schedule intact regardless of how the Starliner-recertification question resolves.