The president also endorses using private companies' rockets to carry astronauts and cargo to the space station.

Spacecraft designed to carry astronauts have to go through a process that ensures they can operate safely.

NASA says the SLS and Orion "will carry astronauts farther into space than ever before."

NASA still must decide whether to make Boeing repeat the unmanned docking test before spacecraft can carry astronauts.

And in 2015, the agency would evaluate plans for a rocket that would carry astronauts into deep space.

Perhaps more importantly, it also was intended to " carry astronauts beyond our orbit to other worlds."

The Dragon will only carry cargo initially, but it is being developed to carry astronauts to orbit as well.

Three American companies continue their relentless slog forward to develop a spacecraft designed to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.

The US government wants NASA to focus on "next-generation" rockets and spacecrafts able to carry astronauts to asteroids or Mars.

The CCDev program is providing some funding for these companies to develop a commercially viable system that could carry astronauts to orbit.

It landed gently, a key step in the development of a capsule designed to carry astronauts into orbit and back to earth.

The US space agency Nasa has chosen Boeing and SpaceX to build a new generation of spaceships to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.

Nasa has been relying on Russian Soyuz rockets to carry astronauts to low-Earth orbit until a commercial spacecraft is ready to take over the task.

Five more Apollo missions carried astronauts to the moon before the program ended in 1972.

A Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft carrying astronauts from the US, Russia and Italy blasted off from Kazakhstan heading towards the International Space Station.

NASA has contracted Elon Musk's SpaceX and Boeing Co BA.N to build separate crew capsule systems capable of carrying astronauts to the space station.