NASA has announced it will allow SpaceX to reuse the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which recently took astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), and the Falcon 9 first stages as early as next year.

The announcement, while not completely unexpected, is an important step in NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP) which is bringing space exploration back to U.S. soil in a way that hasn't been seen since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.