NASA on Friday named the first nine astronauts who will fly to space on Boeing and SpaceX vehicles in 2019 - a mix of novices and veterans who are tasked with restoring America's ability to send humans into orbit. These pioneering flights to the International Space Station aboard commercially built crew capsules will be the first leaving US soil to put people into orbit since the iconic space shuttle program ended in 2011.
For the past seven years, NASA astronauts have hitched rides to the orbiting outpost on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft - at a cost of some $80 million a seat. "This is a big deal for our country and we want America to know that we are back, that we are flying American astronauts on American rockets from American soil," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said as he unveiled the crew members in Houston, Texas.
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