Bigelow Aerospace has raced through the initial phase of a first-of-its-kind Space Act Agreement (SAA) intended to provide NASA with new insight into private sector capabilities and motivations for expanding human space activities beyond Earth orbit, including the lunar realm.
Signed at the end of March, the two-phase exercise should be complete by early November and provide NASA with a range of potential options for folding U.S. and foreign companies into a broad, NASA-led development strategy to carry out the asteroid-retrieval mission outlined in the agency’s $17.7 billion 2014 budget proposal, and eventually send explorers to Mars, according to William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations.
To read more, click here.