Italy is to design modules for the future space station orbiting the Moon, sources said Thursday. Contracts worth some $2.5 million plus co-funding have been signed by Thales Alenia Space (Thales 67%, Leonardo 33%) with Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Orbital-ATK within the framework of the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships promoted by NASA with private companies.

The announcement was made by Walter Cugno, Thales Alenia Space vice president for Exploration and Science and head of its Turin site. Cugno said the contracts were for projects concerning "both the habitat of the near-Moon space station and the architecture of the whole station, which is supposed to be much smaller than the International Space Station".