Instead of awarding contracts for the next phase of the Commercial Crew Program, the agency plans to use multiple, competitively awarded Space Act Agreements.
This flexibility is important during a period of high budget uncertainty when NASA is receiving less funding than President Obama requested for the agency’s commercial space program.
“NASA is committed to ensuring that U.S. companies are sending American astronauts into space,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “This new acquisition strategy will allow us to preserve competition as we maintain our momentum to provide a U.S.-based commercial crew launch capability at the earliest possible time.”
This competitive Space Act solicitation is separate from the work being carried out under existing Space Act Agreements. The new competition will focus on an overall system design rather than single technology activities. Details on the new competition will be available in January.
The announcement for proposals is expected in the first quarter of 2012. These competitively awarded Space Acts will be followed by a competitively awarded contract for the certification phase. The certification phase will ensure that the designs fully meet the safety and performance requirements for NASA utilization.
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