Nasa chief hails new era in space

On Tuesday, Dragon, a freight capsule, was launched into space with the mission to bring food, water and equipment to the International Space Station. However, Dragon is rather special in that it is the first freight capsule to be delivered into space by a commercial industry, SpaceX. This is being described as a new era in space, which is full of endless possibilities. This new era is due to NASA starting to hand off low-Earth orbit missions to commercial industries, starting with frieght delivers and in the future expanded it to transporting astronauts. NASA hopes to be free of all low-Earth orbit missions by later in this decade, which will give them the opportunity to focus on greater space missions. Through allowing and encouraging private companies to take on these missions NASA will be able to save money (as they wont have to build and deploy shuttles to the International Space Station or Moon), which they can use to pursue further space exploration. The artice mentions destination such as asteroids and Mars.
This is only the first step in this direction, however I believe this new era will help us learn more about our galaxy and about the planets/objects inside of it.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18154937

I think that this new way of carrying out low-Earth orbit missions is great. As Suzanne said, this will allow larger space agencies like NASA to save their money for purposes greater than delivering supplies. Much more research and money can be put into missions that are of the larger scope allowing space science to advance tremendously. I also believe this is great as it will allow other companies, like SpaceX, to become a part of space exploration and play an important role in the continuation of learning about our universe. This will ensure more opportunities for more people to become involved in missions in space, and maybe now space exploration will not simply be dominated by NASA and ESA.