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NASA has a plan to put humans on the moon in 2024: launch astronauts to a lunar orbit station, then use a commercial lander to transport them to the surface. But who will build the lander?
Today (April 30), NASA chief Jim Bridenstine will announce the companies that will compete to design that lander at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) during a news conference call that can look follow him live here and / or directly in NASA website. The initiative is part of the agency’s Artemis program, for which President Donald Trump ordered the landing date of 2024.
NASA has previously said that mission 2024 will travel human lander to be completed first from among the contestants announced today, with a 2025 mission going to the second lander completed. Applications to join this selection group were due in November 2019.
Related: NASA reveals plan for Artemis ‘base camp’ on the moon beyond 2024
During the event, Bridenstine will join Doug Loverro, associate administrator of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate; Lisa Watson-Morgan, program manager for the human landing systems program; and Tyler Cochran, program recruitment officer.
Two companies published their submissions during the entry period. Space hardware giant Boeing is already building large portions of the NASA Space Launch System rocket that will send astronauts to the moon, as well as Starliner crew capsule who is completing the testing process for flights to the International Space Station. Introducing the design, Boeing said its goal was to avoid adding more complexity to the Artemis program.
The second known participant is Blue origin, the private space flight company created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The company has so far focused on suborbital flights with its New Shepard rocket and spacecraft; To date, these missions have been decommissioned. Blue Origin recruited three additional companies, Draper, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, to join the team; all three companies have long stories on space flight. The coalition will support the lander proposed by Blue Origin, a variant of the unmanned Blue Moon lander that the company announced in May 2019.
NASA’s current model of trade associations is based on recruiting companies to present concepts for a specific kind of mission, in this case, landing humans in the south pole of the moon. The selected companies are not guaranteed any flight; Today’s announcement simply points out which companies will be considered eligible to participate.
The agency is using the same model to cargo deliveries to the moon through its Lunar Charge Services business program. NASA has hired companies for the first two missions in that program, in which the agency’s payloads will fly next year in cargo landers developed by Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines.
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us On twitter @Spacedotcom and in Facebook.
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