The nine individuals will go up on systems developed by - and contracted from - the Boeing and SpaceX firms.

Most of the crews have previous experience in orbit. Among them are the commander and pilot of the final shuttle mission in 2011 and also Sunita Williams, who is of Slovenian and Indian roots.

For the past seven years, Russian rockets have been the only way to get people into orbit. The costs for one person were roughly 80 million dollars

The first crew should fly in April next year with the Dragon capsule from Space X and then in June the Starliner Capsule from Boeing.

After the retirement of the Space Shuttle programme Nasa took the decision to turn transportation to low-Earth obit destinations into contracutal based operation.

Nasa's motivation was to save money it could then spend on a rocket and capsule system to take humans back to the Moon and on to Mars.

That system will likely fly some time early next decade.