On July 8, 2011, the space shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center, marking the last time a U.S. astronaut was launched into space from American soil. For the seven years since then, NASA has relied on Russia's pricey Soyuz spacecraft to ferry American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

To move beyond reliance on Russian transport, NASA tapped Boeing and SpaceX in 2014 to craft a sequel of sorts to the Space Shuttle: private, Apollo-style “space taxis” built and launched in the United States. Now, we know the names of those launches' first passengers.

At a Friday press conference at NASA's Johnson Space Center, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine revealed nine of the astronauts that will make the first four