"NASA chooses American companies to transport U.S. astronauts to International Space Station"

You may have heard about the little issue that the United States has with Russia right now because of what they are doing in Ukraine.  U.S. space shuttles stopped running in 2011, so although we still have American astronauts on the International Space Station, we have been paying Russia $60 million PER PERSON to transport our astronauts to and from the space station on their Soyuz space shuttle.  In May, Russia said they would not give the U.S. access to the space station, starting in 2020, in retaliation for sanctions we had imposed on the Russians for occupying Ukraine.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/13/5714462/russia-will-cut-off-us-access-to-the-international-space-station-over

Well, NASA decided not to let Russia stop Americans from reaching the space station. Today, they announced that they would make contracts with Boeing and SpaceX to transport American astronauts to and from the space shuttle by 2017.  The contracts require that each company conducts a test flight with an astronaut on it to prove their spacecraft can reach and dock with the space station successfully.  Then, each company will run two to six missions to the space station.

NASA says under this new partnership, they can now focus more of their resources on research to allow humans to land on Mars!

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/september/nasa-chooses-american-companies-to-transport-us-astronauts-to-international/index.html