Washington, Apr 19 (AFP) NASA has announced it has awarded nearly 270 million dollars to four companies, including Boeing and SpaceX, to help their pursuit of making a spacecraft to replace the US space shuttle.
The Houston, Texas-based aviation giant Boeing received yesterday the biggest contract -- USD 92.3 million -- as part of the second round of NASA commercial crew development programme, or CCDev2.
Sierra Nevada Corporation, a Colorado-based company that is at work on its DreamChaser shuttle, won the second largest sum at USD 80 million.
SpaceX, the California-based company that last year completed its first successful test of an unmanned space capsule into orbit and back, won USD 75 million and Blue Origin of Kent, Washington received USD 22 million.