NASA Notifies Congress about Space Station Contract Modification with Russia 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden sent a letter to Congress Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2015 

informing members that, due to their continued reductions in the president’s funding requests 

for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program over the past several years, NASA was 

forced to extend its existing contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency 

(Roscosmos) to transport American astronauts to the International Space Station. This 

contract modification is valued at about $490 million. 

The letter was delivered to the leadership of the congressional committees that oversee 

NASA. 

The full text of the letter follows: 

Since the decision to retire the Space Shuttle in 2004, NASA has been 

committed to developing a follow-on, low-Earth orbit transportation system and limiting 

our reliance on others to transport U.S. crew to the International Space Station (ISS). In 

2010, I presented to Congress a plan to partner with American industry to return 

launches to the United States by 2015 if provided the requested level of funding. 

Unfortunately, for five years now, the Congress, while incrementally increasing annual 

funding, has not adequately funded the Commercial Crew Program to return human 

spaceflight launches to American soil this year, as planned. This has resulted in 

continued sole reliance on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft as our crew transport vehicle 

for American and international partner crews to the ISS. 

I am writing to inform you that NASA, once again, has modified its current 

contract with the Russian government to meet America’s requirements for crew 

transportation services. Under this contract modification, the cost of these services to 

the U.S. taxpayers will be approximately $490 million. I am asking that we put past 

disagreements behind us and focus our collective efforts on support for American 

industry – the Boeing Corporation and SpaceX – to complete construction and 

certification of their crew vehicles so that we can begin launching our crews from the 

Space Coast of Florida in 2017. 

Across the United States, aerospace engineers are building a new generation of 

spacecraft and rockets that will define modern American spaceflight. The safe, reliable, 

and cost-effective solutions being developed here at home will allow for more 

astronauts to conduct research aboard the space station, enable new jobs, and ensure 

U.S. leadership in spaceflight this century. The fastest path to bringing these new 

systems online, launching from America, and ending our sole reliance on Russia is fully 

funding NASA's Commercial Crew Program in FY 2016. Our Commercial Crew 

Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contractors are on track today to provide certified 

crew transportation systems in 2017. Reductions from the FY 2016 request for 

Commercial Crew proposed in the House and Senate FY 2016 Commerce, Justice, 

Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bills would result in NASA’s inability to 

fund several planned CCtCap milestones in FY 2016 and would likely result in funds 

running out for both contractors during the spring/summer of FY 2016. If this occurs, 

the existing fixed-price CCtCap contracts may need to be renegotiated, likely resulting 

in further schedule slippage and increased cost. 
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Human spaceflight and exploration are important activities for this Nation. The 

broad scope and bold goals of our human spaceflight program set our Nation apart from 

all others. Human spaceflight is both an exploration program beyond low-Earth orbit 

comprised of the Space Launch System and the Orion crew vehicle as well as the ISS

and the private sector crew transportation systems necessary to support our research 

and technology development on the ISS – research and development that is critical to 

the success of the exploration program. While I understand that funding is extremely 

limited, it is critical that all of NASA’s human spaceflight efforts be supported. 

It is my sincere hope that we all agree that the greatest nation on Earth should 

not be dependent on others to launch humans into space. I urge Congress to provide 

the funds requested for our Commercial Crew Program this year, so we can prevent this 

situation in the future.