Soyuz May Boost Americans Post 2016

Top NASA officials are quietly working to extend a contract with Moscow that would continue using Russian rockets to fly U.S. astronauts into space until 2016 and beyond - a move that underscores how much the U.S. now relies on its former Cold War adversary, writes Mark K. Matthews for the "ORLANDO SENTINEL".

Already, NASA is committed to pay Russia 1.5 billion during the next five years to transport its astronauts to and from the International Space Station, a necessary arrangement because the U.S. no longer flies a human-rated spacecraft since NASA retired the space shuttle last summer.

NASA has opted to build a large booster capable of several tons of payload capable of taking astronauts beyond the moon to an asteroid or Mars. Meanwhile, SpaceX is looking to boost commercial and government astronauts to space in 2014. Boeing is looking to utilize the CTS-100 capsule on an Atlas-V 402 by late-2016.

Origin: faces-on-mars.blogspot.com