[ad_1]
SpaceX founder Elon Musk speaks at a post-launch press conference after the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. (Image: Reuters)
Lunar landers will carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and vice versa.
- Reuters
- Last update: May 1, 2020 1:25 p.m. IST
NASA selected space firms SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics on Thursday to build lunar landing systems that can take astronauts to the moon by 2024, the accelerated deadline for the White House under the campaign of the space agency of the Moon to Mars. The three companies, which include tech billionaire firms Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, will share $ 967 million from NASA, though the specific amounts each company will receive was not immediately known. Boeing Co (BA.N) proposed a lander concept last year but was not selected.
“This is the last piece we need to get to the moon,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters on Thursday, calling the agency’s first lunar landing acquisition since 1972 “historic.” Unlike the Apollo program that put astronauts on the moon almost 50 years ago, NASA is preparing for a long-term presence on Earth’s satellite that the agency says will eventually allow humans to reach Mars, Relying heavily on private companies created around shared visions for space exploration.
Choosing three providers allows NASA to have redundancy in the event a company falls behind in development, Lisa Watson-Morgan, manager of NASA’s human landing system program, said Thursday. “I think we have the potential for an incredibly exciting future in space with a base on the moon and ultimately sending people and having a self-sufficient city on Mars,” said Musk, who also runs electric car firm Tesla, he said Thursday. .
Last year, Bezos introduced Blue Origin’s design for the lunar lander, Blue Moon, which it intends to build as a prime contractor with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper. Blue Origin plans to launch its landing system using its own heavy-duty rocket, New Glenn. Musk’s SpaceX, which is about to launch its first manned mission for NASA next month, will develop its Starship landing system to send crew and up to 100 pounds of cargo to the moon. Dynetics, a unit of Leidos Holdings Inc, develops a human landing system, which the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture, United Launch Alliance, will launch on its Vulcan system.
BOEING NOT PICKED UP
Cutting Boeing from a key NASA space flight effort strikes at the space wing of the aerospace giant, which for decades has been a key contractor to the International Space Station and, more recently, a secondary provider in the efforts of the NASA to launch humans to the station under its Commercial Crew Program. NASA said it eliminated Boeing and another company as bidders for the lunar landing award early in the selection process, although a specific reason was not immediately clear.
Last month, Boeing lost to competitor SpaceX in a separate contest for cargo delivery services to a lunar space station, and NASA said in a memo that “Boeing’s proposal was the most expensive and the lowest by factor mission suitability. ” In recent months, NASA has been quicker to call Boeing about its problems with various agency programs, such as delays in its long-delayed heavy-load rocket space launch system, billions above budget, and It has suffered dozens of engineering setbacks. The Space Launch System, which has not yet flown, is currently NASA’s journey to transport humans from Earth to the Moon by 2024, but the rocket’s debut mission has already rolled back a year in 2021.
