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NASA on Thursday selected nine companies to compete for $2.6 billion in potential lunar commercial delivery services over the next 10 years, a key step toward long-term study and human exploration of the moon and eventually Mars.The U.S. companies are Astrobotic Technology, Inc., Deep Space Systems, Draper Laboratory, Firefly Aerospace, Inc., Intuitive Machines, LLC, Lockheed Martin [LMT], Masten Space Systems, Inc., Moon Express, and Orbit Beyond. Under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contracts, the nine companies will “bid on delivering…
