Space Habitats For Humanity
August 17, 2016Commercial Habitats
NASA will spend about $65 million this year and next on concept studies and ground prototypes for these six deep-space commercial habitats that may someday fly in the vicinity of the Moon, and could inform future engineering for human missions to Mars. Under the second-round Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP-2) agreements now being negotiated, the companies selected will be expected to invest at least 30% of the cost of their work. “We are now adding focus and specifics on the deep-space habitats where humans will live and work independently for months or years at a time, without cargo supply deliveries from Earth,” says Jason Crusan, who heads the Advanced Explorations Systems unit managing the project at NASA headquarters.