NASA announced Tuesday that it will collaborate with 12 U.S. companies -- including SpaceX, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and small businesses -- on aerospace technologies that will help return humans to the moon by 2024.
The aerospace companies will focus on a variety of areas of development including communications, navigation, spacecraft design, landing on the moon, manufacturing on the lunar surface, power systems, propulsion and a robotic plant harvesting system.
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All the selected U.S. companies were selected through NASA’s Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity when the agency solicited proposals in October 2018.
The 12 private industry partners and NASA are entering nonreimbursable Space Act Agreements, which means there are no funds being granted to the awardees. Instead, NASA will "provide expertise, facilities, hardware and software at no cost."
The companies range from small businesses with less than a dozen employees to larger organizations, including Aerojet Rocketdyne, SpaceX, Lockheed Martin and Blue Origin.
Several of the technologies will utilize facilities at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
SpaceX will work with NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to advance their technology to vertically land large rockets on the moon and study landing affects on the lunar surface. Lockheed Martin will test technologies at Kennedy for autonomous in-space plant growth systems.
SpaceX will also work with teams at NASA's Glenn and Marshall space centers to advance technology needed to transfer propellant in orbit, which will be important for SpaceX's interplanetary spacecraft Starship currently in development.
Under the agreement with NASA, Jeff Bezos's space company Blue Origin will work with NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Goddard Space Flight Center to further develop a navigation and guidance system for landing on the moon. Blue Origin will also partner with those NASA facilities to work on power system for the Blue Moon lander, which Bezos revealed in Washington, D.C., earlier this summer.
While some of the partners don't have the same public clout as the larger companies, they will receive access to NASA's wealth of engineering history and testing facilities, which will be critical to developing technologies for planetary exploration.
Pennsylvania company Bally Ribbon Mills will perform thermal testing in the Arc Jet Complex at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley to test a new seamless weave for a mechanically deployable carbon fabric heat shield.
Montana-based Anasphere will have access to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama to test a compact hydrogen generator for inflating heat shields, which, according to NASA, could help deliver larger payloads to Mars.
“NASA’s proven experience and unique facilities are helping commercial companies mature their technologies at a competitive pace,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. “We’ve identified technology areas NASA needs for future missions, and these public-private partnerships will accelerate their development so we can implement them faster.”
NASA also put out a call Tuesday for companies who can develop lunar landers that can send heavier payloads to the moon, including the lunar South Pole. The opportunity is part of the second round of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
The space agency said it will need both small and midsize lunar landers that will help NASA meet science objectives and its aggressive human exploration goals by 2024.