Bigelow Aerospace / NBCNews.com

A mockup created by Bigelow Aerospace shows a moon base with inflatable modules.

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

Bigelow Aerospace and NASA say they've agreed to look at ways for private ventures to contribute to human exploration missions, perhaps including construction of a moon base. But the space agency emphasized that it's keeping its own focus squarely on corraling an asteroid and then going to Mars.

"As part of our broader commercial space strategy, NASA signed a Space Act Agreement with Bigelow Aerospace to foster ideas about how the private sector can contribute to future human missions," David Weaver, the space agency's associate administrator for communications, said in a statement emailed to NBC News.

"This will provide important information on possible ways to expand our exploration capabilities in partnership with the private sector," Weaver said. "The agency is intensely focused on a bold mission to identify, relocate and explore an asteroid with American astronauts by 2025 all as we prepare for an even more ambitious human mission to Mars in the 2030s. NASA has no plans for a human mission to the moon."

Eyes on the moonThe moon, however, ranks high among the targets that Bigelow Aerospace has in mind. The Nevada-based company has been working on moonbase concepts for years. During a recent interview on the "Coast to Coast AM" radio show, billionaire founder Robert Bigelow said the potential objectives for private-sector space efforts include a lunar base as well as space stations or refueling depots placed at gravitational balance points in the Earth-moon system.

"We're making no bones about it, that's what we're out to try to accomplish," Bigelow said.

Mike Gold, a Washington-based spokesman for Bigelow Aerospace, explained that his company wanted to help "commercial space achieve escape velocity from LEO," or low Earth orbit.

Gold said the NASA-Bigelow agreement would build on the work done by SpaceX, Orbital Sciences Corp. and other companies to build new spaceships for trips to the International Space Station. "What this is doing is projecting that forward, and exploring what commercial companies can do both to lower the cost of beyond-LEO operations, and to create enhanced capabilities," he said.

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To the moon? Bigelow Aerospace and NASA look at private exploration