NASA Saves $1.5 Billion By Choosing SpaceX For 628 Million Kilometer Journey
As the week came to an end, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) chose to award Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) with a $178 million contract to launch an observation satellite to Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa. The satellite, dubbed as Europa Clipper, was originally slated to be launched on The Boeing Company's Space Launch System (SLS) launch vehicle developed exclusively for NASA use. However, due to scheduling constraints, the space agency was having second thoughts about using the SLS as early as last year, when it argued that switching to a commercial vehicle would save as much as $1.5 billion for launch and other costs for the Clipper mission.