WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin was awarded on Thursday a contract potentially worth nearly $7.5 billion to build the next generation space shuttle that might carry man back to the moon.

“We are honored by the trust that NASA has placed in the Lockheed Martin team for this historical and vital step towards space exploration,” said Lockheed Chairman Bob Stevens.

“We think we’re picking the right contractor,” said Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator for NASA. “We know we are.”

The first part of Lockheed’s contract lasts through September 2013 and is worth $3.9 billion. NASA has the option to extend the contract through 2019 for an additional $3.5 billion.

The Orion shuttle is part of the White House’s ambitious multiyear plan called Constellation to replace the current space shuttle and put U.S. astronauts on the moon by 2020, and on Mars after that.

Orion will be able to take “six people to and from the International Space Station,” NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said. “It will take four humans back to the moon, and will be capable of staying in [the moon’s] orbit for up to six months.

Project Constellation’s $104 billion budget “supports us gaining first flight no later than 2014, with the first mission to the moon no later than 2020. It’s early in the program, but folks are going to do their best to beat those dates,” Humphries said.

JP Stevens, vice president of space systems at the Arlington-based Aerospace Industries Association, said [the winner] will dominate the human-based space business for decades.

“Boeing and Lockheed have been together on the [International Space Station] all these years,” he said. “Now they’re taking different paths.”

“One is going to be associated with human space flight for the next couple of decades, one is not,” he added.

dfrancis@dcexaminer.com