NASA just bought the rest of the space station crew flights from SpaceX

Five more Crew Dragon missions will be purchased by NASA to carry astronauts to the space station.

According to the space agency's news release, these may be the last flights NASA needs to keep the space station full. The new procurement shows that the space agency expects the outpost to keep flying for a long time.

The announcement suggests that the other partner in NASA's commercial crew program, Boeing, will fly more crews to the space station than the other partner in the program, Musk's company. Boeing would fly six missions to the station during the lifetime of the station under the new agreement.

Let's take a look at the numbers on that. The Crew-1 mission will be the fourth operational crew mission to the space station by the company. There are two more flights under the original crew contract with NASA. The Crew-7, Crew-8, and Crew-9 missions were awarded by NASA. There are currently 14 Crew Dragon missions.

Boeing hasn't flown a mission to the station. In May, the company successfully completed an uncrewed test flight. Boeing will probably complete a crewed flight test of Starliner late this year or early in 2023 and then fly its first operational mission sometime in 2023 or later if issues are found on the crewed test flight.

The director of commercial space at NASA said in a news release that they hope to certify the Starliner system in the near future. To implement our strategy of having each commercial provider flying alternating missions once per year, we'll need more missions from SpaceX.

NASA hasn't announced the purchase of more Starliners. Boeing hasn't fully demonstrated Starliner's capabilities with crew on board. This week's announcement seems to show that there are no more crewed missions to award to Boeing.

What's the reason? NASA only plans to fly two space station missions a year. Boeing has six missions on the books. The space station has eight years left in it's life. NASA seems to have booked all of the rides it needs for a station lifetime into the future.

There is a chance that Starliner will fly just six missions. The vehicle is likely to be used for private missions in the future. Boeing is a partner on the Orbital Reef project.

At the moment Starliner is only able to fly on the Atlas V rocket. After the Atlas V rocket is retired, Boeing will only be able to complete its original six Starliner missions. Boeing would have to pay a human rate to fly Starliner into space. Boeing doesn't know what it will do after Atlas V on Starliners.