NASA announced yesterday that it managed to reach a decision on the companies which will conduct the process of resupplying the International Space Station once the space shuttles retire. The two ’winners’ are Orbital Sciences of Dulles and SpaceX of Hawthorne, California and the total contract’s worth is of about $3.5 billion.

The agency appeared extremely satisfied with the outcome, as it has been encouraging for quite some time smaller companies to get involved in space transport. Also, this represents a great success for the two chosen companies, which were preferred to the space industry’s giants - Lockheed Martin of Bethesda and Boeing of Chicago. Orbital and SpaceX were involved throughout the past year in a $500 million development program introduced to encourage companies to get into bulding rockets needed for cargo transportation, in order to allow NASA to focus all of its attention on space exploration.

"This is a pretty monumental thing for us. It's the contracts we need to keep the space station flying," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for space operations. He also explained that the commercial carriers will carry between 40 and 70 percent of the agency’s cargo to the space station.

Once the shuttle fleet retires in 2010, NASA will be using Russian rockets for all of its missions, as the building process for a new American spacecraft will demand a lot of time. Orbital and SpaceX will handle the unmanned cargo tasks during that time. There will be no astronauts to worry about on any of their flights, but the companies will have to stick to the schedule and send to the ISS the cargo with experiments and provisions. Orbital Sciences is believed to get up to $1.9 billion for eight flights, starting in 2011, while SpaceX would get up to $1.6 billion for 12 flights starting in 2010. 

The new contract "will serve as a showcase for the types of commercial services U.S. space companies can offer NASA," David W. Thompson, Orbital's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.

Orbital Sciences records annual sales of about $1.1 billion and its staff registers more than 3,800 people all across the country, including close to 2,000 in the D.C. region. Most of its business is related to developing technologies for NASA but it is also working on several missile defense systems for the Pentagon. Another one of its activities is linked to commercial communications satellites.

SpaceX was founded by PayPal’s co-founder Elon Musk, known as the first entrepreneurs to compete in the business of flying cargo - and eventually astronauts - to space. He stated that this represents a tremendous responsability, as the tasks are extremely difficult and the agency is counting on a flowless delivery.

Both companies have already preparing their activities, as SpaceX announced that it plans to launch from a complex it built at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, beside the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, and Orbital also stated that it plans to fly from NASA's Wallops Island facility in Virginia.