NASA chooses nine companies to bid on flying to Moon

The US space agency on Thursday announced nine private companies, mostly start-ups, that will bid on $2.6 billion in contacts to build spacecraft to carry payloads to the Moon as early as 2019. The move is part of NASA's goal of sending people to the Moon in the next decade, for the first time since the Apollo era of the 1960s and '70s. Of the group, the only well-known name is aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, which has a long track record of success with NASA and built the InSight lander that touched down Monday on Mars.