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FEATURE SPACE X
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Seeking Own Space Odyssey

US reliance on Russia for space station travel to end in 2017
By Arun Sivasankaran in Florida

IT IS AN ARRANGEMENT THAT dOESN’T international space station. Boeing has the
sit well with many, including President bigger contract with NASA, worth US$4.2
Donald Trump- the United States having to billion, but it will be SpaceX that wins the
depend on Russia to send their astronauts race.
to the international space station (ISS). That, The California-based company, founded
however, could change by the end of this year. in 2002 by Elon Musk, is confident of being
With NASA’s commercial crew program, able to fly two NASA astronauts to the ISS
which was literally gasping for fuel due to on its Crew Dragon spaceship by the end of
budgetary constraints not too long ago, 2017. The company, which has a contract with Expedition 48 Commander Jeff
back on track again, Space Exploration NASA that is worth US$2.6 billion, is now Williams (shown here) and Flight
Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) and focused on meeting NASA’s stringent testing Engineer Kate Rubins of NASA were
Boeing are getting to the business end of and safety requirements. successful in installing the first of
producing crew transportation systems The infrastructure needed for human two international docking adapters
Friday Aug. 19, 2016, during a five
that will fly astronauts to and from the spaceflights will be installed at Kennedy hour and 58-minute spacewalk
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