How NASA Leverages Industry Capabilities Instead Of Owning Space Systems

NASA’s New Model

For most of its history, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, operated on a specific model. When the agency needed a rocket, a capsule, or a space station, it designed the hardware in-house and then paid aerospace contractors like Boeing or Lockheed Martin to build it to exact specifications. NASA owned the hardware, operated the missions, and assumed all the risk. This “cost-plus” model built the Saturn V rocket, the Apollo program, and the Space Shuttle. It was effective but also incredibly expensive and slow.

In the 21st century, a new philosophy has taken hold. This new model is built on public-private partnerships. Instead of paying a company to build a rocket that NASA will own, NASA now pays that company for a “service.” It effectively buys a ticket. NASA provides seed funding and technical expertise to help companies develop their systems, but the companies own and operate the hardware. NASA becomes just one of many potential customers.

This shift didn’t happen overnight. It was a gradual evolution, born from the need to service the International Space Station (ISS) more affordably. Its success has become the blueprint for America’s entire space exploration strategy, from maintaining a presence in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to landing astronauts on the Moon and, eventually, on Mars. This article explores the commercial programs that are defining NASA’s modern era.

The Foundation: Commercializing the International Space Station

The International Space Station is a sprawling, orbital laboratory that has been continuously inhabited since 2000. It’s a marvel of engineering, but it has a constant, hungry demand for supplies: food, water, air, science experiments, and spare parts. For years, the Space Shuttle was its primary delivery truck, but the fleet was aging and expensive to fly. After the Columbia disaster in 2003, NASA knew the Shuttle’s days were numbered, and it needed a new way to supply the station.

Commercial Resupply Services (CRS)

This need gave birth to the first major commercial program: Commercial Resupply Services, or CRS. In the mid-2000s, NASA took a gamble. It offered fixed-price contracts to private companies to develop and fly new, uncrewed cargo ships to the ISS. It was a simple proposition: NASA wouldn’t micromanage the design; it would just pay per successful delivery.

Two companies won the initial CRS-1 contracts:

• SpaceX: A new company founded by Elon Musk, which developed the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon cargo capsule.
• Orbital Sciences (now part of Northrop Grumman): This established rocket company developed the Antares rocket and the Cygnus spacecraft.

The program was a stunning success. After initial development and test flights, both companies began regular, reliable cargo runs. SpaceX’s Dragon had the unique ability to return cargo and science experiments to Earth, something that hadn’t been possible since the Shuttle’s retirement. Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus became a workhorse, and the company cleverly used it as a platform for secondary missions, like boosting the ISS’s orbit.

The CRS model proved that the private sector could reliably and affordably provide a service that was once the sole domain of national governments. NASA saved billions, which it could then redirect to more ambitious projects. The program was so successful it was renewed with a second round of contracts (CRS-2), which added Sierra Space and its innovative Dream Chaser spaceplane to the roster of providers.

Commercial Crew Program (CCP)

With cargo secured, NASA turned to a much more difficult challenge: human transportation. When the Space Shuttle retired in 2011, NASA had no way to launch its own astronauts. This began a decade-long reliance on Russia’s Roscosmos space agency and its venerable Soyuz spacecraft. This arrangement was not only politically awkward but also incredibly expensive, with the price per seat soaring to over $90 million.

The Commercial Crew Program (CCP) was created to solve this problem, applying the same “buy-a-service” model from CRS to human spaceflight. This was a monumental leap of faith. NASA would be entrusting the lives of its astronauts to privately designed and operated vehicles.

The competition was fierce, but in 2014, NASA awarded final development and flight contracts to two companies:

• SpaceX: Proposing a crewed version of its Dragon capsule, called Crew Dragon, to launch on the Falcon 9.
• Boeing: Proposing a new capsule called the CST-100 Starliner, to launch on an Atlas V rocket.

The development was harder and took longer than anyone anticipated. Human spaceflight is unforgiving, and the safety requirements are exacting. Both companies faced technical setbacks, parachute problems, and testing failures.

SpaceX was the first to cross the finish line. In May 2020, its Demo-2 mission successfully launched NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS, marking the first crewed launch from American soil since 2011. Since then, Crew Dragon has become the primary workhorse for NASA’s crew rotations, flying multiple long-duration missions to the station.

Boeing’s Starliner has faced a much more difficult path. Its first uncrewed test flight in 2019 suffered a major software anomaly that prevented it from docking with the ISS. A second uncrewed flight in 2022 was successful, paving the way for its first-ever Crewed Flight Test (CFT) in 2024. That mission, carrying astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, successfully docked but encountered new problems with helium leaks and thruster failures. This has delayed its final certification.

Despite Starliner’s troubles, the CCP is considered a triumph. It broke the Soyuz monopoly, restored U.S. launch capability, and ensured NASA has redundant providers for its most precious cargo. It also unlocked a new market: SpaceX has already used Crew Dragon to fly all-private missions, including the Inspiration4 flight and multiple trips to the ISS for the company Axiom Space.

Charting the Future of Low Earth Orbit: Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD)

The International Space Station has been an outstanding success, but it won’t last forever. It’s an aging piece of infrastructure, and its operating costs consume a massive portion of NASA’s human spaceflight budget – billions of dollars every year. NASA and its international partners plan to de-orbit the ISS and crash it into a remote part of the Pacific Ocean around 2030.

This presents a new problem: the “LEO gap.” What happens after 2030? If there is no station to replace the ISS, all the research, technology development, and commercial activity in LEO will stop. Astronauts would have nowhere to go to gain long-duration spaceflight experience before attempting missions to the Moon or Mars.

To prevent this gap, NASA created the Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program. The idea is to take the CRS/CCP model to its ultimate conclusion. Instead of building a “Space Station 2.0,” NASA will help fund the creation of multiple private space stations. NASA will not own these stations; it will simply be an “anchor tenant,” paying to send its astronauts and experiments to these commercial outposts.

The goal is for a robust LEO economy to develop, where NASA is just one of many customers. Other customers might include foreign space agencies, private companies for in-space manufacturing, media and entertainment companies, and wealthy space tourists. By transitioning to this model, NASA hopes to save billions in operating costs, which it can then pour into its deep-space ambitions with the Artemis program.

In late 2021, NASA awarded over $400 million in combined Space Act Agreements to three teams to begin formulating their station designs.

The Contenders: Building the Next Space Stations

The CLD program has several major players, each with a different design and business philosophy.

Axiom Space

Axiom Space has a unique and pragmatic approach. Its plan is to first build its station modules and attach them to the International Space Station while it’s still operational. This allows Axiom to build its station incrementally, using the ISS’s existing power and life support systems.

Axiom has already been flying precursor missions. These “private astronaut missions” (like Ax-1 and Ax-2) use SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to take paying customers – including private individuals, researchers, and astronauts from other nations – to the ISS for short stays. These missions are building operational experience and revenue before their station is even in orbit.

The first Axiom module, the “Axiom Hab One,” is scheduled to launch and attach to the ISS’s forward port. It will be followed by other modules, including a research lab and a panoramic observatory. When the ISS is finally ready for retirement, the Axiom segment will be detached and become a new, free-flying commercial space station.

Orbital Reef (led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space)

This team is proposing a station called “Orbital Reef,” which it bills as a “mixed-use business park in space.” The vision is a large, modular station that can be expanded over time to suit customer needs.

• Blue Origin: The company founded by Jeff Bezos would provide the large-diameter core modules (using its future New Glenn rocket for launch) and serve as the primary operator.
• Sierra Space: This company would provide its Dream Chaser spaceplane for crew and cargo transportation. It would also supply its inflatable LIFE (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) modules, which can be packed into a rocket fairing and then inflated in orbit to create huge, pressurized volumes.
• Other Partners: The team also includes Boeing (providing a science module and managing Starliner missions) and Redwire Space (focusing on in-space manufacturing and research operations).

The Orbital Reef concept is aimed squarely at a diverse market, including research, manufacturing, and tourism, with NASA as a key early customer.

Starlab (led by Voyager Space and Airbus)

The third team is building a station called “Starlab.” This project was initially started by Nanoracks, a company with extensive experience in flying small commercial payloads to the ISS. Nanoracks is now part of a larger holding company, Voyager Space.

The Starlab design features a large, single-module station that combines a habitat, a laboratory, and a power and propulsion system all in one. It’s designed to be a continuously crewed, 4-person station. In a major strategic move, Voyager Space created a transatlantic joint venture with Airbus, the European aerospace giant. This partnership brings Airbus’s extensive engineering and hardware experience to the project and also positions Starlab to service the European Space Agency (ESA) as a customer.

A fourth initial awardee, Northrop Grumman, proposed a station based on its proven Cygnus and HALO module designs. However, the company later shifted its strategy, opting to cancel its own station plan and instead partner with one of the other teams, likely providing hardware to the eventual winner.

The CLD program represents a high-stakes bet. The challenge for all these companies is closing the business case. Can they attract enough non-NASA customers to make their stations profitable? The 2030 deadline for the ISS’s retirement is approaching fast, and the race is on to ensure there is a new American-led outpost in orbit when the old one is gone.

Here is a comparison of the primary CLD contenders:

The Commercial Return to the Moon: CLPS

While CLD handles the future of Low Earth Orbit, NASA’s grand ambition lies 240,000 miles away: the Moon. The Artemis program is the agency’s plan to establish a sustainable, long-term human presence on and around the Moon, with the ultimate goal of using it as a stepping stone to Mars.

But before sending astronauts, NASA needs to scout locations, test new technologies, and conduct science. In the old days, this would have required a long, expensive, multi-billion-dollar robotic lander program. For Artemis, NASA is applying the commercial model again, this time with Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS.

What is Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS)?

The CLPS initiative is a delivery service to the lunar surface. NASA has assembled a “pool” of private companies that are all developing their own lunar landers, large and small. When NASA has a science instrument, a technology demonstration, or a small rover it wants to send to the Moon, it doesn’t design a mission. It simply issues a “task order,” and the CLPS companies bid on the contract to deliver that payload.

This model is a radical departure. NASA is buying a ride on a lander that is owned and operated by a private company. The company is responsible for everything: the launch, the transit to the Moon, and the landing.

The CLPS philosophy is “more shots on goal.” NASA fully accepts that not all of these missions will succeed. Private lunar landings are incredibly difficult, and many of these companies are new. But by funding many smaller, cheaper, and faster missions, NASA can take more risks. The failure of one or two missions is acceptable if the overall program delivers a steady stream of science and data at a fraction of the cost of a single, monolithic “flagship” mission.

The goals of CLPS are:

1. Science: Deliver suites of instruments to study the lunar environment, geology, and water ice.
2. Technology: Test new technologies for navigation, landing, power, and communication.
3. Exploration: Scout potential landing sites for future human Artemis program missions.
4. Economy: Stimulate the creation of a commercial lunar economy, where companies can provide services to any customer, not just NASA.

The CLPS Providers and Their Missions

The CLPS pool includes a wide range of companies, from small startups to aerospace giants. The first missions of this new era began flying in 2024.

Astrobotic Technology

Based in Pittsburgh, Astrobotic was one of the first companies to receive a CLPS award.

• Peregrine Mission 1: Their first lander, Peregrine, launched in early 2024. It carried a mix of NASA science instruments and private “cultural” payloads. Unfortunately, the mission suffered a critical propellant leak shortly after launch. While the lander never reached the Moon, the team managed to operate it in space, test its systems, and gather valuable data before it was safely guided to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. This was a textbook example of the “high-risk” CLPS model in action.
• Griffin Mission 1: Astrobotic’s next mission is much larger. They are building the Griffin lander, which is tasked with a high-priority NASA delivery: the VIPER rover. VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) is a golf-cart-sized rover designed to map water ice at the Moon’s south pole. This mission is a direct-line support for Artemis, as that ice could one day be harvested to create drinking water and rocket fuel.

Intuitive Machines

This Houston-based company also won several of the first CLPS contracts, building a line of Nova-C landers.

• IM-1 (Odysseus): In February 2024, Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander made history. After a dramatic flight where a navigation sensor failed and engineers had to upload a last-minute software patch, the lander successfully touched down on the lunar surface. It was the first American landing on the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972 and the first-ever successful landing by a private company.
• The landing wasn’t perfect. The lander came in faster than intended and tipped over on its side. But it remained operational. It successfully transmitted data from several NASA and commercial payloads, proving the CLPS model could work.
• Future Missions: Intuitive Machines has two more CLPS-funded missions on its manifest. IM-2 is planned to go to the lunar south pole and will deploy a small rover and an ice-drilling experiment. IM-3 is slated for a lunar swirl called Reiner Gamma.

Firefly Aerospace

Firefly, known for its Alpha rocket, is also a key CLPS provider. They are building a larger lander called the Blue Ghost.

• Blue Ghost Mission 1: This mission, set to launch in 2026, will deliver a suite of 10 NASA instruments to Mare Crisium, a dark lava plain on the Moon’s near side.
• Blue Ghost Mission 2: In 2023, NASA awarded Firefly a second, more ambitious mission: to deliver a payload to the far side of the Moon. This is notoriously difficult because the Moon itself blocks direct communication with Earth. This mission will require a communications relay satellite, which Firefly is providing as part of the service.

Other CLPS providers include Draper, which is developing a lander for a 2026 mission to the far side, and established giants like Lockheed Martin and SpaceX, who are in the provider pool but have not yet been awarded a specific landing mission.

CLPS is rapidly accelerating the pace of lunar science. Instead of one or two big missions per decade, NASA is now flying multiple missions per year. It’s creating a fleet of private landers that are building the supply chain for a permanent human return.

The Human Element: Commercializing the Artemis Program

The Artemis program is the flagship of NASA’s deep-space ambitions. While its core hardware – the massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion crew capsule – are built using a traditional, NASA-managed contract model, the rest of the program is built on commercial partnerships.

Artemis is not Apollo 2.0. The goal isn’t just “flags and footprints.” It’s to build a sustainable, long-term presence that includes a lunar space station, surface habitats, and rovers, all in partnership with industry and other nations.

The Gateway: A Commercial Outpost in Lunar Orbit

The first major piece of new Artemis infrastructure is the Gateway. This is a small space station that will be placed not in Low Earth Orbit, but in a unique near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the Moon. This orbit is highly stable and provides an excellent staging point for missions to the lunar surface.

Unlike the ISS, the Gateway will not be permanently crewed. It will be a “way station” where Orion crews can dock, assemble their landing systems, and prepare for descent to the surface. And its key components are being built commercially.

• Power and Propulsion Element (PPE): The first component, the PPE, is being built by Maxar Technologies (formerly SSL). Maxar is a company best known for building commercial communications satellites. NASA is leveraging their existing, flight-proven solar-electric propulsion technology for the Gateway‘s “engine.”
• Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO): The second piece is the HALO module, which provides the initial living quarters and docking ports. This is being built by Northrop Grumman and is based on their Cygnus cargo spacecraft, leveraging flight-proven technology to save time and money.
• Gateway Logistics Services (GLS): Just like the ISS, the Gateway will need supplies – science experiments, food, and fuel. NASA has already awarded the first GLS contract to SpaceX. SpaceX will use a new, upgraded version of its cargo capsule, called Dragon XL, launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket, to fly autonomous resupply missions to the Gateway.

The Gateway is a hybrid program, combining NASA’s international partnerships (ESA, JAXA, and the Canadian Space Agency) with a commercial acquisition strategy for its core components and logistics.

Human Landing System (HLS): The Commercial Lunar Taxis

This is the most critical commercial program for Artemis: the Human Landing System, or HLS. To get astronauts from the Gateway in lunar orbit down to the surface and back up again, NASA is not building its own “Lunar Module 2.0.” It is, once again, buying a “landing service” from a private company.

In 2021, NASA stunned the space world by selecting a single company for the first Artemis human landing: SpaceX and its radical Starship vehicle.

SpaceX’s HLS Starship is unlike any spacecraft ever built. It’s a massive, 165-foot-tall vehicle made of stainless steel, designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. Its sheer scale changes the entire paradigm of lunar exploration. While the Apollo Lunar Module could carry two astronauts and a few hundred pounds of cargo, Starship is designed to land over 100 tons on the lunar surface.

The “mission architecture” for Starship is a complex dance of orbital mechanics:

1. A “Lander” version of Starship is launched into Low Earth Orbit. It does not have the heat shield or fins of the Earth-return version.
2. SpaceX must then launch multiple “Tanker” Starships to meet the Lander in orbit and transfer massive amounts of propellant (liquid methane and liquid oxygen) in a process called orbital refueling. This is a technology that has never been done on this scale.
3. Once fully fueled, the Starship HLS fires its engines and travels to lunar orbit.
4. It docks with the Orion crew (or the Gateway), and the Artemis astronauts transfer over.
5. Starship then descends and lands vertically on the lunar surface. Because the vehicle is so tall, it features a large elevator to lower the crew and cargo to the ground.
6. After their surface stay, the astronauts re-board, and the entire Starship vehicle launches from the Moon’s surface – using its ascent thrusters – and returns to lunar orbit to meet Orion for the trip home.

The selection of SpaceX was controversial. A “National Team” led by Blue Origin (which included Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman) fiercely protested the decision. They argued that NASA should have funded two redundant landers, just as it did for the Commercial Crew Program.

In response to political pressure and a desire for redundancy, NASA agreed. It created a second HLS competition called the Sustaining Lunar Development (SLD) contract. In 2023, NASA awarded this second lander contract to Blue Origin and its team.

The Blue Moon lander, as it’s called, is a different, more traditional design. It’s a three-stage vehicle:

1. A “transfer stage” (based on hardware from Lockheed Martin and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket) moves the lander from LEO to lunar orbit.
2. A large “descent stage” (powered by Blue Origin’s powerful BE-7 engines) performs the main braking and landing. The lander is shorter and “squatter” than Starship, with the crew cabin closer to the surface.
3. A smaller “ascent stage” (built by Lockheed Martin and based on its Orion technology) launches the crew off the surface to return to the Gateway or Orion.

Now, NASA has two competing commercial landing services for its Artemis missions beyond the initial landing. SpaceX is slated to fly the first landing, Artemis III, and a subsequent mission. Blue Origin is contracted to fly a later mission, Artemis V. This dual-provider strategy fosters competition and ensures that if one company’s vehicle is grounded, NASA has a backup.

Future Frontiers: Commercializing Mars and Beyond

The commercial model has proven so successful for LEO and the Moon that NASA is already planning to extend it to the rest of the solar system.

Lunar Surface Services and Infrastructure

The Artemis program‘s goal is a long-term “Artemis Base Camp.” This will require a new generation of commercial services on the lunar surface.

• Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV): This is the next major commercial service. NASA is not buying a “moon buggy.” It’s asking companies to provide a “rover-as-a-service.” Companies will develop, launch, and land their own rovers. NASA astronauts will then use them on the surface, and NASA will pay the company an annual fee. When astronauts aren’t present, the company is free to use the rover for its own commercial purposes, like supporting a private science mission. Several teams, including one led by Intuitive Machines (with Boeing) and another by Astrolab (with Lockheed Martin), are competing for this contract.
• Lunar Infrastructure: NASA is also spurring a commercial market for other vital surface systems. This includes power systems (like Lockheed Martin’s vertical solar arrays) and communications. In one famous example, Nokia won a NASA contract to deploy a 4G/LTE cellular network on the Moon, which CLPS landers and Artemis astronauts can use for high-speed communication.

The end goal is a true lunar economy, where companies are mining water ice, selling power to other landers, and providing high-speed internet, all with NASA as just one of many customers.

Mars: The Next Commercial Horizon

Mars is the ultimate destination. The “Moon to Mars” strategy is explicit: everything NASA is doing at the Moon – the commercial partnerships, the reliance on private landers, the orbital staging post – is a dress rehearsal for the first human mission to Mars.

• Mars Sample Return (MSR): This is the next major robotic priority for NASA. The Perseverance rover is currently collecting rock samples on Mars. The MSR campaign is a complex series of missions (in partnership with ESA) to launch a lander, fetch those samples, and launch them into Mars orbit, where another spacecraft would capture them and bring them to Earth.
• The original MSR plan became so complex and expensive (over $11 billion) that in 2024, NASA took a radical step. It put the program on hold and issued a “call for help” to the private sector, asking for faster, cheaper, and more innovative commercial ideas to get the samples back. This move directly mirrors the genesis of the CRS and CLPS programs and signals that the next generation of Mars missions will likely be commercial partnerships.
• Future Mars Logistics: The hardware being developed for the Moon has a direct application to Mars. SpaceX’s Starship was designed from day one with Mars as its primary goal; the HLS contract is, in effect, funding a critical piece of a commercial Mars architecture.
• It is all but certain that when NASA is ready to send heavy cargo to Mars to pre-position supplies for astronauts, it won’t build a new cargo lander itself. It will issue a “Commercial Mars Payload Service” contract, just as it did for the Moon.

Summary

NASA has fundamentally transformed its operational model. It has evolved from an agency that builds and “owns” all of its hardware to a smarter, more agile organization that acts as a customer and a partner. This shift allows NASA to leverage the innovation and speed of the private sector, saving money and fostering a brand new space economy.

This public-private partnership model began with the highly successful Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) and Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which now handle all logistics for the International Space Station.

That success is now being applied across all of NASA’s ambitions. The Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD)program is managing the transition from the ISS to a future of private space stations, ensuring an uninterrupted American presence in orbit.

On the Moon, the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative is sending a rapid-fire series of robotic landers to the surface, accelerating science and scouting for human missions. The Artemis programitself is dependent on commercial partners for its Gateway logistics and, most importantly, for its Human Landing Systems (HLS), with SpaceX and Blue Origin building the next generation of lunar taxis.

This entire strategy – using the Moon as a testbed for commercial services – is paving the way for the next great leap. The infrastructure, supply chains, and partnerships being forged today in lunar orbit and on the lunar surface are the same ones NASA will use to one day land the first humans on Mars.