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NASA announced today that it has signed a $ 1 billion contract with three companies, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX to develop moon landing systems.
SpaceX by Elon Musk (also head of Tesla), Blue Origin by Jeff Bezos (head of Amazon and the richest man in the world) and Dynetics, another American aerospace company, will invest US $ 967 million to develop each Lunar Descent module before February 2021, the date the United States space agency must choose one of the three options.
“The United States is in the final stages of its project to send astronauts to the Moon in 2024, when we will see the incredible moment when the first woman will step on the lunar surface,” said Jim Bridenstine, NASA administrator.
“It is the first time since the Apollo missions that NASA has released funds for a manned lunar landing system. We now have companies contracted to work on the Artemis program,” he added. This manned landing system is crucial to the Artemis mission, the American return to the moon program.
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, which halted construction and testing of the rocket and Artemis probe, Bridenstine said he expected the mission to continue.
“We have to give people hope. We have to give them something that makes them dream and that inspires not only our nation, but the whole world.”
