Next week, Space Exploration Technologies plans to test-fly a space capsule called Dragon.
KOROLYOV, Russia (Reuters) -- A Russian space capsule docked with the orbiting station Mir on Monday to allow a joint Russian-French-Slovak crew to embark on what could be the last mission to the aging craft.
We also reached a critically important milestone in May when SpaceX became the first private company to send a spacecraft -- the Dragon cargo capsule -- to the International Space Station and return it with cargo intact.
Industry officials said in recent weeks plans to use a heavy-lift rocket and space capsule supplied by SpaceX, imploded.
At the same time, the agency is working with its industry contractors to develop a heavy-lift rocket and space capsule to take Americans beyond Earth orbit to an asteroid and ultimately Mars.
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Even if NASA elects to merge the two remaining test launches, it will still need to spend more money than it was originally planning to verify that Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule are suitable for space-station operations.
After a two-day journey aboard the Soyuz capsule, the crew will dock with the space station, overlapping briefly with the current crew - station commander Mike Fossum of Nasa, Japan's Satoshi Furukawa and Russia's Sergei Volkov - who will then return to earth.
The privately-owned capsule successfully berthed with the space station at 8:56 am EST.
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While NASA works with U.S. industry partners to develop these capabilities, the agency also is developing the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration.
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Nasa is due to retire its space shuttles next year and replace them with the Orion spacecraft, an Apollo-like capsule that would launch on a new rocket called Ares 1.
Meanwhile, NASA is developing a huge rocket called the Space Launch System and a capsule known as Orion to carry astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 and the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s goals laid out by Obama in 2010.
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Joanne Maguire, overall head of the company's space programs, said in an interview that the Orion capsule is slated to blast off on top of a heavy-lift version of the U.S. military's Delta IV rocket.
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