The next U.S. spacecraft designed to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station also needs to act as a lifeboat if something goes wrong on the orbiting outpost.
NASA officials hope to find the next astronaut lifeboat — the first American one in 40 years — through the agency's Commercial Crew Program. The space agency is partnering with private companies to find better ways to explore space from American soil. Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp. and SpaceX are all currently developing new spacecraft that could bring NASA astronauts into orbit and keep them safe if disaster strikes the space station.
"You've got to make sure it provides the same capability on day 210 as it does on day one," Justin Kerr, manager of the NASA Commercial Crew Program's spacecraft office, said in a statement.
In outer space, the air inside a man-made environment can "develop dead spots, or sections of the cabin without air for breathing, unless there is something to move the air around," NASA officials said in a statement.
"You don't want someone to go into the spacecraft and immediately pass out because there's no breathable air in that one area," Scott Thurston, deputy manager of the Commercial Crew Program's spacecraft office, said in a statement.
The first component of the International Space Station reached orbit in 1998. Since then, the station has hosted 204 people and has been visited by spacecraft from Russia, Europe, the United States, Japan and private companies. The station covers an area as large as a football field.
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