NASA is stretching out the third phase of its Commercial Crew Program, providing an additional $55 million to three contractors for more development work on privately designed space transportation systems that could ferry astronauts to and from the international space station as soon as 2017. The added funding brings the combined value of the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) Space Act Agreements NASA awarded in August 2012 to Boeing Space Exploration of Houston, Sierra Nevada Space Systems of Louisville, Colo., and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif. to about $1.16 billion. It also stretches the contracts' base period to August 2014 from May 2014, according to an Aug. 15 press release from NASA.
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