Station to rely onprivate space flight

摘要

As it works to turn the International Space Station (ISS) into a national laboratory, NASA will have to deal with a major bottleneck: transporting crew and equipment to the facility and back. The existing fleet of space shuttles, each with a carrying capacity of 22,700 kilograms per launch, is set to retire next year, leaving the agency to rely on the unmanned Russian Progress spacecraft, which has a cargo capacity of only 1,700 kg, and the Soyuz spacecraft to transport crew members. To fill the gap, NASA hopes to rely on private space flight.