NASA announced on Wednesday, August 5, that the space agency will be forced to make an extension of its contract with Russia when it comes to relying on them to fly their astronauts to the International Space Station due to continuing reductions in funding requests by the U.S. government.
This new contract will now require an additional US $490 million from taxpayers which will extend into 2019. NASA will still continue to depend on Russia for them to send their astronauts to the ISS where NASA administrator Charles Bolden has already pleaded with lawmakers with the space agency's funding towards NASA's Earth Science division budget.
Bolden said on a letter addressed to the Congress on Wednesday that he already presented a plan in 2010 to partner with American industries to return space mission launches back to the U.S. by 2015, provided with enough funding. He said that unfortunately, after five years, the annual funding for NASA is still not enough for the commercial crew program to return manned spaceflight launches back to American soil this year.
The U.S. ended its space shuttle program in 2011 which means that the only way for astronauts to get to the space station space is via Russian Soyuz rockets under Roscosmos. NASA is now spending US $80 million for each astronaut to board the Soyuz rocket.
Meanwhile, private space companies such as Boeing and SpaceX are now developing commercial space vehicles to transport astronauts to space that will soon be launched by the end of 2017. Last September, NASA granted a $6.8 billion contract for Space X and Boeing to develop the Dragon capsule and the CST-100 space capsule.
However, SpaceX's recent cargo resupply launches to the ISS ended in failure as the Falcon 9 rocket which is carrying supplies such as food, water and scientific payload, exploded in June, moments after its launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
NASA has been hoping to begin flying American astronauts by U.S. rockets on 2017 but reductions from 2018 budget requests for the commercial crew which is part of the House and Senate budget proposals for the fiscal year will prevent seven planned CCtCap (Commercial Crew Transportation Capability) milestones for 2016, says Bolden.
House Republicans already sent a proposal for NASA's budget which is unfortunately, $250 million less and Senate Republicans, offered $300 million less from the White House's request of $1.24 billion budget for the commercial crew program.