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Narrator: NASA and its Commercial Crew Program today announced new agreements with three American

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commercial companies to design and develop the next generation of U.S. human spaceflight capabilities,

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enabling a launch of astronauts from U.S. soil in the next five years.

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Advances made by these companies under newly signed Space Act Agreements through the agency's

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Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative are intended to ultimately lead to the availability of

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commercial human spaceflight services for government and commercial customers.

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NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden: Our commercial crew and cargo efforts are based

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on a simple but powerful principle. By investing in American companies and American ingenuity,

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we're spurring free-market competition to give taxpayers more bang for the buck while

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enabling NASA to do what we do best, reach for the heavens.

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Narrator: Sierra Nevada Corporation will advance its Dream Chaser spacecraft,

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which resembles NASA's space shuttle but is smaller and based on improvements to the agency's

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HL-20 lifting-body design. The company partnered with United Launch Alliance to

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launch its spacecraft atop an Atlas V rocket.

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SpaceX's crewed Dragon will get more lift capability from the next-generation of

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Falcon rockets. The uncrewed version of Dragon recently made history as the first

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commercially built spacecraft to rendezvous and then berth with the International Space Station.

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Boeing will continue to develop its CST-100 spacecraft, which underwent rigorous

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testing during two previous commercial crew development phases. It too will launch atop an Atlas V.

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NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Ed Mango: I am very confident in the ability and

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capability of our three partners under iCap. I believe that we can make great progress

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with these three partners.

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Narrator: Between now and May 31, 2014, NASA's partners will complete their spacecraft and

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launch vehicle designs, test their hardware, and then showcase how they would operate and manage

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missions from launch through orbit and landing.