NASA is asking six companies to help the agency move spacecraft between difficult-to-reach orbits.

The agency recently awarded a total of $1.4 million to the group, which includes companies like Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance and Rocket Lab. The goal is to eventually send various sizes and types of spacecraft to a variety of destinations in the final frontier, using orbital transfer vehicles.

Orbital transfer vehicles launch atop rockets, carrying other spacecraft that they deliver to specific, often hard-to-reach, orbits. The new early-stage studies for NASA should be complete by mid-September.

NASA will use the work to potentially bring "risk-tolerant payloads" to space, the agency stated on Tuesday (Aug. 5), "with a possibility of expanding delivery services to larger-sized payl

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