Commercial Resupply Services
Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) are a series of flights awarded by NASA for the delivery of cargo and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) on commercially operated spacecraft. The first CRS contracts were signed in 2008 and awarded $1.6 billion to SpaceX for twelve cargo Dragon and $1.9 billion to Orbital Sciences for eight Cygnus flights, covering deliveries to 2016. The Falcon 9 and Antares rockets were also developed under the CRS program to deliver cargo spacecraft to the ISS. The first operational resupply missions were flown by SpaceX in 2012 (SpaceX CRS-1) and Orbital Sciences in 2014 (Cygnus CRS Orb-1). A second phase of contracts (known as CRS-2) was solicited in 2014. In 2015, NASA extended CRS-1 to twenty flights for SpaceX and twelve flights for Orbital ATK. CRS-2 contracts were awarded in January 2016 to Orbital ATK Cygnus, Sierra Nevada Corporation Dream Chaser, and SpaceX Dragon 2, for cargo transport flights beginning in 2019 and expected to last through 2024. Phase 1 contract awards and demonstration flights NASA has been directed to pursue commercial spaceflight options since at least 1984, with the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 and Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990. By the