NASA awarded three companies contracts to develop private space stations in preparation for the decommissioning of the International Space Station.
Moreover, NASA announced that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos space travel company Blue Origin, US defense contractor Northrop Grumman and space services company NanoRacks have won the agency ” Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Destination (CLD) project contract, with a total contract value of 415.6 million U.S. dollars.
Among them, NanoRacks won the highest contract value, which was USD 160 million. Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman were awarded USD 130 million and USD 125.6 million contracts. It is worth noting that the private holding company Voyager Space is the majority shareholder of NanoRacks’ parent company XOMarkets.
Earlier this year, NASA announced that the agency had received “approximately 12 proposals” from multiple companies, hoping to obtain a CLD project contract. As NASA plans to decommission the International Space Station by 2030, the CLD project represents the efforts of supporting private companies to build new space stations, and the agency expects to save more than $1 billion annually.
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NASA has increasingly used public-private partnerships as a way to achieve its space goals, rather than building and owning the hardware itself. In the past ten years, the agency has achieved great success through this model, such as the development of spacecraft through SpaceX and Northrop Grumman to provide cargo and manned services.
Furthermore, NASA is not expected to pay the full cost of helping private companies build new space stations. The agency stated that from an investment perspective, “this strategy must be applied to both the government and the private sector.”
Blue Origin previously announced its plans to cooperate with companies such as Sierra Space, Boeing, Redwire Space, and Genesis Engineering to build the “Orbital Reef” space station. These companies hope that the basic version of Orbital Reef will be put into use by 2027, and it will be gradually improved in the next ten years.
NanoRacks also announced a partnership with Voyager and Lockheed Martin to jointly build a space station called “Starlab”, with the goal of operating in orbit by 2027.
Northrop Grumman is building its own private space station. The company said that the space station will initially support 4 astronauts and then expand to 8 astronauts.
It is worth noting that Axiom Space did not bid for the CLD project. This company has won a $140 million NASA contract to connect the living module to the International Space Station.
Axiom Space stated in a statement that the company “congratulates the winners and looks forward to establishing a shared vision of a thriving commercial network in low-Earth orbit.”
