NASA/Wikimedia CommonsEarlier this week, NASA announced that it would purchase seats on commercially organized missions to the International Space Station (ISS) by 2024. The International Space Station (ISS) has been the exclusive destination of government-sponsored astronauts for almost two decades now, and has been continuously inhabited by humans since 2000. However, allowing private astronauts onboard the U.S. segment before the Station’s decommissioning would still represent a marked increase in U.S. government support for commercial human spaceflight. Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative, which called for the construction of Space Station Freedom, establishment of permanent presence on the Moon, and a crewed mission to Mars. Still, if the agency continues down its current path, the next decade could be an exciting time for the U.S. space program.

Source: Forbes November 30, 2019 01:11 UTC