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NASA to hold briefing with companies vying to carry astronauts into space

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Before space shuttle Endeavour’s final launch on Friday, NASA officials plan to discuss what they envision as the next step in manned spaceflight.

The space agency will host a media briefing at 8 a.m. PST on April 28 with the four companies it selected to develop the next generation of rockets and spacecraft for its Commercial Crew Development program.

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The briefing will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

Last week, NASA handed out $269.3 million in seed money to the companies, which could one day take over the potentially multibillion-dollar job of ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station after the shuttle program is mothballed by the end of the year.

The companies include Hawthorne-based rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, and Boeing Co., which develops spacecraft in Huntington Beach and uses rocket engines made by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne in Canoga Park.

The other two awards were $22 million to Blue Origin, a closely held space venture in Kent, Wash., that is owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, and $80 million to Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nev.

The companies’ technology is still years away before it is astronaut-ready. In the meantime, U.S. astronauts will have no way to travel to the space station other than paying the Russian government $63 million for a ride on its Soyuz rocket.

However, there are still two shuttle launches, starting with space shuttle Endeavour set for Friday at 12:47 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

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-- W.J. Hennigan

twitter.com/wjhenn

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