Boeing is NASA's first choice for manned ISS mission

Washington: NASA has placed its first order from Boeing for a commercial human spaceflight mission which will involve ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).The order is part of NASA's Commercial Crew Transportation Capability Programme (CCtCap) that has given the first "commercial crew" rotation mission to the Boeing Company to launch its CST-100 astronaut crew capsule to the ISS by late 2017.

According to the US space agency, a similar order with another US space technology company SpaceX is expected later this year. NASA will then decide which of the two companies gets a final go ahead for the first mission in late 2017 after completing the stringent certification process.

Boeing will first conduct a pair of unmanned and manned orbital CST-100 test flights earlier in 2017 in April and July. Boeing got the mission order from NASA because they have "successfully demonstrated to NASA that the Commercial Crew Transportation System has reached design maturity appropriate to proceed to assembly, integration and test activities", Universe Today reported.