NASA is launching a new effort to encourage private businesses in the United States to get into space. In Washington D.C. Thursday, leaders at the space agency announced that nine privately owned companies will be able bid on contracts to deliver supplies to the moon. And industry sources tell Inverse that this news is just the start of something much larger.
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The space companies announced Thursday are
Astrobotic Technology, Inc.: Pittsburgh
Deep Space Systems: Littleton, Colorado
Draper: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Firefly Aerospace, Inc.: Cedar Park, Texas
Intuitive Machines, LLC: Houston
Lockheed Martin Space: Littleton, Colorado
Masten Space Systems, Inc.: Mojave, California
Moon Express: Cape Canaveral, Florida
Orbit Beyond: Edison, New Jersey
This past May, NASA announced its intention to construct a Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway, which will serve as an outpost for future missions into deep space.
We want multiple providers that are competing.
“We’re doing something that’s never been done before,” said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine Thursday. “When we go to the moon, we want to be one customer in a robust marketplace between the Earth and the moon. We want multiple providers that are competing. Welcome to the competition.”
The companies named above will become a part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program (CLSP). They will look to deliver payloads to the moon, where NASA intends to build infrastructure they need to stay there for the foreseeable future.
Watch: NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine Says an "Intermittent" Human Presence on the Moon By 2029
Bridenstine added that maintaining a lunar presence was in “response to the science community” who have been seeking to perform long-term experiments on the moon. To honor this, Bridenstine added that missions will be overseen by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, not the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.
But that aside, there is far more to come from this announcement for the burgeoning commercial space industry. Les Kovacs, a spokesperson for Firefly Aerospace, a small rocket company that was tapped by NASA today says that this announcement is part of a far larger picture when it comes to space travel.
He spoke to Inverse from the 2018 SpaceCom Expo in Houston, where industry partners and NASA representatives gathered to discuss the future of private space industry.
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