NASA Selects 6 Companies To Develop Space Habitats For Future Deep Space Missions

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has allotted six companies the task of developing prototype of human space habitats suitable for deep space missions.

Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas, Boeing from Pasadena in Texas, Lockheed Martin of Denver, Orbital ATK of Dulles in Virginia, Sierra Nevada Corporation's Space Systems of Louisville in Colorado and NanoRacks of Webster in Texas are among the six chosen companies. While, some of these companies will build habitation modules, the others will focus on developing communication infrastructure, propulsion systems, and other important aspects of deep space survival, reported Space.com.

It is to be noted that NASA's Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (Next-STEP) program will be giving away a total of $65 million in contract awards and the selected companies will have to bear 30 per cent of the habitat-development costs themselves.

The main aim of NASA's Next-STEP program is to develop deep space habitats for humans to live safely in space for extended periods of time. All of the six companies have been allotted approximately 24 months' time to develop ground prototypes and conduct concept studies for deep space habitats. The ground prototypes will be used for three main purposes which includes supporting integrated systems testing, human factors and operations testing, and to help define overall system functionality, according to NASA.

Jason Crusan, director of NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems, said that NASA is currently on an ambitious expansion of human spaceflight and wants to utilize the innovation, skill and knowledge of both the government and private sectors for its much anticipated trip to Mars, reported The Verge.

He added that the next human exploration capabilities needed beyond the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule will be deep space, long duration habitation and in-space propulsion. This is the reason that the space agency is now focusing in the development of deep space habitats where humans will live and work independently for long duration that too without getting cargo supply deliveries from Earth.