NASA ACO Selections: 41 Moon and Mars Tech Projects Chosen

What NASA announced

NASA has selected 41 technology proposals from 37 U.S. companies under its 2025 Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity (ACO). The program is meant to speed up capabilities the agency will need for crewed missions to the Moon and, eventually, Mars. 23 The selections were announced June 26. 1 The agency framed the round as an effort to accelerate work in space transportation, planetary surface operations, and the infrastructure needed for sustained lunar exploration. 2 NASA's own summary highlights two problems in particular: powering lunar outposts and protecting spacecraft from abrasive Moon dust. 3

Greg Stover directs the Advanced Research and Technology Division in NASA's Research and Technology Mission Directorate. He described the goal as turning American industry into "active partners" in exploration. He argued that leaning on commercial firms lets the agency develop key capabilities quickly while strengthening the domestic space economy. 2

Labs, not checks

The ACO model is unusual. NASA is not writing grants. Selected companies instead get access to agency expertise and facilities such as wind tunnels and thermal vacuum chambers. 1 TechTimes describes it as a no-cash partnership program and attaches a figure of about $62 million to it. 1 The figure most plausibly reflects the value of the NASA time and infrastructure involved rather than money paid to firms, though the coverage does not break it down.

The structure has an obvious appeal. Testing hardware in vacuum chambers or high-speed flow environments is expensive and slow to arrange privately, especially for startups. Opening government test assets lets NASA influence which technologies mature without committing procurement dollars. It also lets companies keep ownership of what they build.

The standout projects

Three examples get the most attention in the coverage. 1

• Zeno Power is working on a nuclear battery meant to keep systems running through the lunar night, which lasts roughly two weeks.
• Lockheed Martin is developing a laser-based power grid that would send energy across the lunar surface.
• Stoke Space is developing a reentry system for its reusable rocket.

The first two speak directly to the power problem NASA flags in its own description of the round. 3 The Moon's long, frigid nights are among the hardest engineering constraints for any permanent base. Solar arrays alone cannot carry a site through them. Radioisotope power and beamed energy are two different answers to the same question: how to deliver electricity reliably to places the sun does not reach, or reaches only half the time. Stoke's entry sits on the transportation side. Rapid, reusable launch and return is the economic precondition for everything else. 12

The Starship backdrop

TechTimes tied the announcement to SpaceX's Starship, the vehicle NASA is relying on to land astronauts on the Moon. Its coverage coincided with Starship's thirteenth test flight. 1 The outlet's argument is that Starship cannot solve every problem of living on the Moon by itself. Power, dust, and surface infrastructure are separate challenges that a lander does not address. 1 That framing fits NASA's own emphasis on surface operations and long-term infrastructure. 23

Where the coverage agrees and differs

The outlets agree on the core facts: 41 proposals, 37 companies, the 2025 ACO, and a focus on Moon and Mars capabilities. 123 They differ mostly in emphasis.

• The European aggregator's account stays close to NASA's institutional message, built around Stover's quote and the public-private partnership rationale. 2
• ScienceDaily's summary, dated July 15, 2026, leans on the practical problems the projects target: power and dust. 3
• TechTimes is the only one to name specific companies, put a dollar figure on the program, and connect it to Starship's flight schedule. 1

The gap between the June 26 announcement and the mid-July summary suggests the news circulated in waves rather than as a single release. 13

Why it matters

The ACO round shows how NASA's exploration strategy is changing. Large prime contracts still define the headline vehicles. But much of the enabling technology for a sustained lunar presence is being cultivated through lighter-touch arrangements. Under these, the agency contributes test capacity and know-how, and industry carries the development risk.

That approach is efficient, but it has limits. Access to a vacuum chamber does not guarantee a funded flight opportunity. Many ACO technologies will still need later contracts or private capital to reach the Moon.

Even so, the choice of projects is telling. Nuclear batteries, laser power, and reusable reentry systems are not speculative curiosities. They target the specific bottlenecks that would separate brief landings from an actual base. If even a few of these 41 efforts mature, the payoff could exceed the program's modest, cashless price tag. That is a reasonable bet for an agency trying to stretch its budget across two destinations.