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The Americans are returning to the moon. But they will not leave alone.
NASA to unveil a set of new "Moon partnerships" with US companies at a press conference this afternoon.
"Working with American companies is the next step toward conducting long-term scientific studies and human exploration of the Moon and Mars," said an agency blog.
Starting at 2 pm ET Administrator Jim Bridenstine will make this announcement live on NASA TV and on the official website.
The event will also be available on social media, Twitch TV and YouTube. The public is invited to ask questions using the Twitter #askNASA hashtag or by commenting on NASA's Facebook feed.
Bridenstine and TBA's "Future Partners" will include representatives from the NASA Science Mission Directorate, the Johnson Space Center and the Goddard Space Flight Center, as well as local students from FIRST Robotics.
Beyond the information disseminated and the participants, the details are meager.
Bridenstine Tuesday hinted in a tweet that the United States "is returning to the surface of the moon … sooner than you think".
Nearly 50 years after Neil Armstrong became the first human to come to the surface of the Earth's satellite, President Trump signed a warrant to send American astronauts back to the planetoid.
"Under Space Policy Directive 1, the agency will conduct innovative and sustainable exploration of the Moon with commercial and international partners," NASA wrote on its blog.
The United States remains the only country to successfully conduct manned missions on the Moon, the last having left the lunar surface in December 1972.
Since then, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has laid rovers on Mars, studied Saturn and its moons, collected data on Pluto, discovered thousands of possible exoplanets and allowed astronauts to conduct low Earth orbit experiments.
The announcement this afternoon comes days after NASA's InSight Mars lander successfully landed on the red planet, ready for a two-year mission to study its deep interior.
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