The United States space agency the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said that it has placed an order with aircraft manufacturing company Boeing for its first operational mission to take astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2017.

There are reports that Elon Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, will receive its first order in the second half of the year. Earlier this month, the Hawthorne headquartered space transport services company successfully performed a pad abort test of its flight vehicle. NASA will decide later that which company gets an opportunity to fly its mission to the space station first.

According to the space agency, Boeing’s Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft will help the agency in talking astronauts to the ISS. The mission to the space station will restore the country’s spaceflight capabilities.

Kathy Lueders, manager of Commercial Crew Programme of NASA, said, “Final development and certification are top priority for NASA and our commercial providers, but having an eye on the future is equally important to the commercial crew and station programmes. Our strategy will result in safe and cost-effective crew missions”.

Earlier, the Chicago headquartered Boeing completed its fourth milestone in a phase of programme named ‘Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap)’. Boeing’s vice president of Commercial Programmes, John Mulholland, said that the milestone has shown that the transportation system is ready for test activities. The company is all set to take astronauts to the space station in 2017. The fourth milestone has taken the company to a step closer to mature its CST-100 design, Mulholland added.

Orders under the CCtCap programme have been made a long time prior to the missions so that every company can have enough time to create and assemble the launch vehicle and spacecraft. As per NASA, a standard mission to the ISS will carry four astronauts and cargo.