NASA agreements to support work on commercial spacecraft and space stations
NASA agreements to support work on commercial spacecraft and space stations
NASA partnerships announced June 15 would support development of new commercial capabilities from companies including Blue Origin and SpaceX.
SpaceX received a CCSC-2 agreement to work on an “integrated low Earth orbit architecture” involving both its Dragon and Starship vehicles. “This architecture includes Starship as a transportation and in-space low-Earth orbit destination element supported by Super Heavy, Dragon, and Starlink,” the announcement stated.
It looks like this is the first official mention of a Starship station.
Eric Berger also said:
To add a bit of context: A couple of years ago SpaceX considered working with one of the four current providers of commercial space stations for NASA. But when it came time to decide Musk pulled back, saying SpaceX needed to focus on getting Starship into orbit first.
At the time, IIRC, the speculation was that SpaceX really phoned in their Commercial LEO Destinations bid. Berger makes it sound like they might have withdrawn?
This also confirms that Blue Origin is still working on a crew vehicle. Old info about the "biconic capsule" that they bid for ISS Commercial Crew showed a 4-7 seater. Who knows what it is at this point or when or if it'll ever fly, but it's always fun to add more mysterious programs to the Blue Origin mystery chronicles.