NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on Commercial Space

NASA is on a Journey to Mars and commercial space is a key component of our strategy to send American astronauts to the Red Planet in the 2030s.
In 2010 when President Obama laid out his vision for space exploration, it may have been hard to believe that six years later we’d be regularly transporting cargo to the International Space Station on commercial spacecraft, or that we’d be on the verge of returning launches of American astronauts to the Station from U.S. soil on the spacecraft built by American companies.
Today, that’s our reality.
SpaceX and Orbital ATK are the first commercial space companies to deliver cargo to the ISS.
We’ve also ordered the first missions from SpaceX and The Boeing Company — the first American companies that will carry American astronauts to space. The first astronauts are now training for test flights aboard commercial spacecraft in preparation for those missions.
We are closer than ever before to sending American astronauts to Mars. We’re “insourcing” American jobs and empowering American entrepreneurs and innovators to expand the new commercial market in low-earth orbit.
Today, we’re marking another significant milestone. We are announcing the companies that will continue our successful commercial cargo program until at least 2024. This phase of the program will allow us to continue using the Space Station as our springboard to the rest of the solar system and a test bed for human health in space.
Our investment in commercial space is creating jobs and it’s bringing us closer to sending American astronauts to Mars. With the commercial cargo successes to date and our announcement today – I am very confident that commercial space will continue to propel our nation into the future – we’ll continue to Launch America.

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