Boeing Co. garnered the largest of four NASA Space Act Agreement awards designed to nurture the development of commercially operated astronaut transport systems, landing a deal worth $92.3 million to refine the design of its CST-100 crew capsule, the U.S. space agency announced Monday, April 18, 2011.
The other winners of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) 2 awards are: Blue Origin, $22 million; Sierra Nevada Corp., $80 million; and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), $75 million. The awards are intended to help the companies refine their concepts for transporting astronauts to and from the international space station on a commercial basis, reports SpaceNews.
Among the bidders not selected for second round awards are: Alliant Techsystems, Orbital Sciences Corp., United Launch Alliance and United Space Alliance.
Awards will take the form of milestone-based, fixed-price, pay-for-performance NASA investment using Space Act Agreements instead of traditional government contracts. The program will culminate in a Commercial Crew Program in which companies will demonstrate the capability of taking NASA crews to and from the International Space Station.
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