NASA Administrator Charles Bolden sent a letter to Congress informing members that due to continued reductions in the president's funding requests for the agency's Commercial Crew Program over the past several years, NASA was forced to extend its existing contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency to transport American astronauts to the International Space Station.
NASA last month named four American space pioneers to work closely with the Boeing Company and SpaceX to train for the first US Commercial Space Flights that will return American launches to U.S. soil and further open up low-Earth orbit transportation to the private sector.
The selections were the latest major milestone in the Obama Administration's plan in partnership with U.S. industry to send humans farther into the solar system than ever before, create good-paying American jobs and end the nation's sole reliance on Russia for space travel.
But on Wednesday, NASA said it signed a contract modification agreement with the Russian government, costing the U.S. taxpayers about $490 million, so that Roscosmos will ferry U.S. astronauts to and from the International Space Station in 2018 and 2019 as a precaution in case of delays to Boeing and SpaceX crew capsules.
In a letter sent Wednesday to the leadership of the congressional committees that oversee NASA, the NASA Administrator called on lawmakers "We put past disagreements behind us and focus our collective efforts on support for American industry - the Boeing Corporation and SpaceX - to complete construction and certification of their crew vehicles so that we can begin launching our crews from the Space Coast of Florida in 2017."
Draft budgets proposed by the Senate and House would earmark $900 million and $1 billion, respectively, for the development of commercial crew space transportation concepts and enabling capabilities, known as CCDev, next year. But NASA says the funding is insufficient to keep the commercial space initiative on track to launch crew to ISS by the end of 2017.
In 2010, Bolden presented to Congress a plan to partner with American industry to return launches to the United States by 2015 if the requested level of funding was provided. He said,"Unfortunately, for five years now, the Congress, while incrementally increasing annual funding, has not adequately funded the Commercial Crew Program to return human spaceflight launches to American soil this year, as planned. This has resulted in continued sole reliance on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft as our crew transport vehicle for American and international partner crews to the ISS."
The NASA chief noted that US aerospace engineers are building a new generation of
spacecraft and rockets that will define modern American spaceflight, and the fastest path to "launching from America, and ending our sole reliance on Russia is fully funding NASA's Commercial Crew Program in FY 2016."
US contractors are on track today to provide certified crew transportation systems in 2017, according to Bolden.
Bolden warned that reductions from the FY 2016 request in the House and Senate appropriations bills would result in NASA's inability to fund several planned Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CctCap) milestones, and would likely result in funds running out for both contractors. He also told the congressional committees that if this occurs, the existing fixed-price CCtCap contracts may need to be renegotiated, likely resulting in further schedule slippage and increased cost.
Boeing CST-100 and SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft plan to conduct crewed flight tests in 2017. Once the test program is completed successfully, and the systems are certified by NASA, the companies will conduct between two and six crew rotation missions to the International Space Station. Each mission will transport four NASA crew members and at least 220.5 pounds of pressurized cargo to and fro the orbiting laboratory.
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