NASA has said in a statement it would like to buy another six places on four Russian-made Soyuz spacecraft to take American, European, Canadian and Japanese astronauts to the International Space Station in 2018 and bring them back to Earth.
NASA would pay the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) up to $80 million for each place.
A Soyuz takes about three years to produce.
It was announced on December 16 that Orbital Sciences had signed a contract with Energomash for the supply of new RD-181 rocket engines. Starting in 2015 they will be used in the assembly of the Antares rocket.
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