NASA awards $10 million flight services contract to seven firms

Space tourism company Virgin Galactic is among seven companies NASA has tapped to take over cargo flights, as early as next month, as part of a new commercial direction for the U.S. space program.

This week's announcement of the combined $10 million flight services contract follows the July return trip of the Atlantis vehicle that capped a 30-year manned-space shuttle program. The firms NASA has hired will be flying technology into near space, not propelling astronauts into outer space.

NASA staff will not be assigned to the contractor teams, agency spokesman David Steitz said Wednesday. In a cost-cutting measure, the Obama administration opted to abandon former President George W. Bush's plan to build a new manned space vehicle in favor of outsourcing shuttle construction and launches to the private sector.

The space agency expects to start doling out tasks to the seven firms by the middle of September, Steitz said. Each company will vie for work orders worth a few hundred thousand dollars up to a few million dollars apiece, depending on load requirements and services rendered, he said. The maximum amount each vendor can collect over the two-year contract period for the Flight Opportunities program is $5 million.

Mojave, Calif.-based Virgin Galactic, backed by media mogul Sir Richard Branson, already has sent humans into space aboard a craft called SpaceShipOne and has ambitions to launch NASA research crews on other vehicles in the future.

"The Flight Opportunities program is an efficient research program that leverages investment in private vehicles to drive new discoveries for researchers and real benefits for taxpayers," George Whitesides, Virgin Galactic's current president and NASA's chief of staff until May 2010, said in a statement.

NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun said in a statement, "Through this catalog approach, NASA is moving toward the goal of making frequent, low-cost access to near-space available to a wide range of engineers, scientists and technologists."

The other companies NASA chose include:

-- Armadillo Aerospace, Heath, Texas

-- Near Space Corp., Tillamook, Ore.

-- Masten Space Systems, Mojave, Calif.

-- Up Aerospace Inc., Highlands Ranch, Colo.

-- Whittinghill Aerospace LLC, Camarillo, Calif.

-- XCOR, Mojave, Calif.

The original version of this story incorrectly stated that the firms NASA hired would fly technology into low-Earth orbit. In fact, the flights will not reach that level. The story has been corrected.