UPDATE, 5:12 p.m.: Here's the statement from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk:
"SpaceX is deeply honored by the trust NASA has placed in us. We welcome today's decision and the mission it advances with gratitude and seriousness of purpose. It is a vital step in a journey that will ultimately take us to the stars and make humanity a multi-planet species."
UPDATE, 4:15 p.m.: NASA Administrator Charles Bolden confirmed that the NASA contracts for commercial crew will go to Boeing and SpaceX, which will deliver astronauts to orbit by 2017. The contracts total $6.8 billion for the initial period. That's $4.2 billion for Boeing and $2.6 billion for SpaceX.
For years now we've been talking about the big gap in America's human spaceflight capability and who's going to fill it. At 4 pm Eastern this afternoon, NASA will make an announcement that should finally clarify which private companies it will continue to support as they build their own rockets and spacecraft that can carry American astronauts to orbit and the International Space Station. Watch it live here:
NASA, you'll remember, retired the space shuttles in 2011 without a replacement in place, leaving the United States reliant on Russia to transport its astronauts to the ISS—at a cost of $70 million per seat. Meanwhile, the agency has been giving money to private companies building spacecraft that could carry humans to orbit. Before this afternoon's announcement, three companies were still in the running: defense/aerospace giant Boeing, Elon Musk's SpaceX, and Sierra Nevada, which is turning an old experimental NASA design for a winged spacecraft into the Dream Chaser.
NBC News is reporting that the moment that NASA will announce continued support for two of those companies. Boeing will get the larger share to keep up the work on its CST-100, while SpaceX will continue to receive NASA money as it builds the Dragon spacecraft and Falcon rockets.
Check back this afternoon for more details.
Andrew's from Nebraska. His work has also appeared in Discover, The Awl, Scientific American, Mental Floss, Playboy, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn with two cats and a snake.
