NASA said Friday it has set May 21 in Florida for the launch of a manned space mission aboard a SpaceX rocket, the first of its kind for Elon Musk's company and the first crewed flight launched since American soil for almost ten years. The chief of the American space agency, Jim Bridenstine, indicated on Twitter that two astronauts would take place aboard a Falcon Heavey rocket of the company SpaceX in direction of the International Space Station.
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SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies) successfully launched the first commercial flight of the Falcon Heavey rocket a year ago from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Since then, it has deployed satellites for several US federal agencies, including NASA, universities and a non-profit organization.
Some $ 6.8 billion has been allocated to SpaceX and Boeing to build rockets and capsule systems capable of taking astronauts into orbit for the first time since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011.