Before summer, 14 more humans could launch from U.S. soil as SpaceX has three missions set to lift off from Kennedy Space Center on Crew Dragons while Boeing looks to send its CST-100 Starliner up to the International Space Station for the first time with people on board.
“We’re heading into, I would say one of the busiest increments in the history of station,” said Kathryn Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate at press conference last week. “We have a string of critical missions coming up.”
That includes not only crewed flights from the Space Coast, but a replacement Soyuz capsule to be sent up from Russia to the station for one damaged by micrometeorites and resupply missions from SpaceX, Northrop Grumman and Russia in the next four months.