| NASA will announce Sept. 16, 2014, a decision regarding the return of human spaceflight launches to the United States. Credit: NASA |
NASA will make a huge human spaceflight announcement during a news briefing today, and you can watch it live online.
Today (Sept. 16) at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT), NASA officials are expected to declare their pick for a private company that will move forward toward potentially launching astronauts to the International Space Station under the Commercial Crew Program in the next three years. The announcement will be broadcast live, and you can watch it on Space.com via NASA TV.
NASA's Commercial Crew Program is designed to create a taxi service that launches from the United States to the space station by 2017. At the moment, the private spaceflight companies SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, Boeing and Blue Origin are all in the running for contracts, and today's announcement could reveal which firm (or firms) gets to move ahead in the program. Although many people expect that the space agency will tap one company, NASA officials could pick more than one to move on.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana, Commercial Crew Program Manager Kathy Lueders and astronaut and former space station crewmember Mike Fincke will take part in the NASA briefing from Florida. The space agency will also host a teleconference for members of the press that will air on NASA's news audio streaming service after the initial briefing.
NASA has relied on Russia's Soyuz capsules to deliver astronauts to the space station since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011.
Learn more from NASA: http://ift.tt/XvPS4L
Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+ . Follow us @Spacedotcom , Facebook and Google+ . Original article on Space.com .
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