A study on the future of human outer-space ventures speculates that in the 2020s astronauts will have landed on an asteroid and corporate researchers may be living on the moon, Reuters reported.
The study by Bigelow Aerospace, commissioned by NASA, showed "a lot of excitement and interest from various companies," according to Robert Bigelow, founder and president of the Las Vegas-based firm.
Bigelow Airspace surveyed about 20 companies as well as foreign space agencies and research organizations. The firm plans to own, lease, and operate inflatable space habitats both on the moon and in other places around earth's orbit.
Some projects discussed in the study range from pharmaceutical research conducted in the inflatable habitats to missions around the moon's surface.
President Barack Obama's proposed budget for the fiscal year requests $105 million for the U.S space agency to begin working on a project that hopes to find a small asteroid and bring it into the moon's orbit so that future astronauts can visit it by 2025. NASA also hopes to send astronauts to Mars about a decade after that.
Private companies are more interested in starting projects on the moon and lunar surface itself.
"We can take advantage of what the private sector is doing in areas such as space transportation, life support systems and other technologies needed for travel beyond the space station's 250 mile high orbit," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's head of space operations.
NASA generally doesn't discuss partnerships until the project is completely planned, but this time they decided to start talking to private entities earlier in the game.
"We thought that this time we would kind of turn that around a little bit, that we would ask industry first what they're interested in ... where they see human presence that makes sense, where they see potential commercial markets," Gerstenmaier said.
Bigelow turned in a draft of the first part of the report to Gerstenmaier 40 days early. The second part of the report, which will cover mission planning and other aspects of public-private partnerships, is due this fall.
