Enlarge / The Crew-2 mission is seen departing the International Space Station in November 2021. (credit: SpaceX)
NASA has announced that it will purchase three additional flights for its astronauts to the International Space Station on SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle.
The announcement, posted on the space agency's website late on Friday afternoon, follows a "request for information" issued by NASA in October seeking the additional transportation to keep "uninterrupted" US access to the space station.
The blog post contained the following rationale for selecting SpaceX to provide these three crewed flights while not selecting the other potential provider, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft:
