NASA is looking to private companies to launch both supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station, it announced this week.
The agency will form a separate office at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas to coordinate contracted trips to the station. It will be called the Commercial Crew/Cargo Project Office (CC/CPO). On 22 November, NASA is scheduled to officially request proposals from companies, who must submit their ideas by 27 January 2006.
Currently, the US space shuttles and Russian Progress and Soyuz ships are the only vehicles making supply runs to the station. The space shuttles are expected to retire in 2010, after 18 more flights to the ISS, leaving the US without a domestic method of reaching the station.
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