Is NASA’s Moon Mission the End for Legacy Space Firms?

The world will be witnessing the preamble to a changing of the guard in space as four astronauts climb aboard the Orion spacecraft built by Lockheed Martin Corp. and await the countdown. They are scheduled to be launched this afternoon into space on a 10-day journey around the moon by the Space Launch System rocket, a NASA initiative lead by Boeing Co. with help from subcontractors Northrop Grumman Corp. and Aerojet Rocketdyne.

As any space junky will tell you, those companies are legendary players in the history of US space exploration. They were key contractors on the Apollo missions that landed astronauts on the moon beginning in 1969, allowing America to win the space race against Russia and cementing the country’s status as the dominant superpower. After some 50 years, their time driving NASA's space explorations appears to be ending.