NASA has announced the four commercial aerospace firms it has selected to help it develop new capabilities in space.

The space agency's Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities is an agreement with these firms to participate in NASA's several commercial efforts.

The program is intended to benefit from the know-how and infrastructure of the private sector by giving the selected companies access to resources and technologies NASA has developed since it was formed in 1958.

That access is being offered to accelerate development in the private sector of integrated space mission capabilities, NASA says.

The four companies that NASA selected are:

• ATK Space Systems of Beltsville, Maryland, which is working on space logistics and space transportation capabilities.

• Final Frontier Design of Brooklyn, New York, developer of space suits intended for intra-vehicular activity.

• SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, developing launch capabilities for use in supporting missions to deep space.

• United Launch Alliance, in Centennial, Colorado, also working on new launch vehicles aimed at reducing mission costs and enhancing performance.

"Companies in all shapes and sizes are investing their own capital toward innovative commercial space capabilities," says Phil McAlister, head of commercial spaceflight development at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These awards demonstrate the diversity and maturity of the commercial space industry. We look forward to working with these partners to advance space capabilities and make them available to NASA and other customers in the coming years."

It is hoped these companies can create services and products to support the country's space program within 5 years or so, NASA says.

In recent years NASA has entered into several similar public-private arrangements in an effort to make its shrinking budget go farther.

Those include Commercial Orbital Transportation Services and Commercial Resupply services, as NASA has handed over to commercial partners the task of delivering cargo, supplies and experiments to the International Space Station.

To date, there have been six such missions launched to the orbiting science laboratory, ferrying around 19,000 lbs. of payloads to the only current destination being visited in low-Earth orbit.

With a Commercial Crew Program, NASA hopes to see commercial companies involved in transporting astronauts to the ISS; earlier this year, the agency tapped Boeing and SpaceX to develop transportation capabilities to take astronauts to the space station and back.

Finally, NASA has initiated a program dubbed Lunar CATALYST, with the goal of developing a commercial robot lunar lander.