NASA names companies to build lunar landers for human missions

NASA has chosen companies that will develop landers to send astronauts to the Moon’s surface in the 2020s.

The White House wants to send the next man and first woman to the Moon in 2024, to be followed by other missions.

Blue Origin by Jeff Bezos, SpaceX by Elon Musk and Alabama-based Dynetics were selected to build landers under the space agency’s Artemis program.

The 2024 mission will see astronauts walk the surface of the Moon for the first time since 1972.

Combined, the contracts are worth $ 967 million (£ 763 million; € 877 million) and will last for a “base period” of 10 months.

“With these contractual awards, the United States is moving forward with the final step necessary to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024, including the incredible moment when we will see the first woman set foot on the lunar surface,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. .

“This is the first time since the Apollo era that NASA has direct funding for a human landing system, and now we have contracted companies to do the work for the Artemis program.”

Winning landing concepts take different approaches to the challenge of placing humans on the lunar surface.

Blue Origin, founded by Amazon President and CEO Jeff Bezos, has partnered with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper to build their lander. The Bezos firm is the main contractor in the company that has been called the “National Team”.

The design is divided into three parts: a transfer element that will take astronauts from a higher lunar orbit to a lower one; a descent stage that will take them from low lunar orbit to the surface, and an ascent stage that will cause the crew to take off from the surface at the end of their mission.

The concept is designed to launch on Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s Vulcan rocket systems.

Dynetics’ spacecraft concept is a one-stage structure to launch on the Vulcan rocket. According to Lisa Watson-Morgan, manager of the human landing system program at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, this design features a “single, low crew module, which places the crew very close to the lunar surface for transfer and access. “

SpaceX’s design is the Starship, which will use the company’s Super Heavy rocket for launch. A prototype of the spacecraft has been tested at the company’s Boca Chica test site in South Texas.

The other key elements in NASA’s Luna plan are more advanced in their development. Astronauts bound for the Moon will launch from Earth in a capsule called Orion on top of a powerful rocket known as the Space Launch System (SLS). NASA also plans to build a small lunar orbiting space station, known as the Gateway, where different landing stages could be assembled.

However, last month Gateway was removed from the “critical path” for the initial return mission of 2024. But during a press conference on Thursday, Mr. Bridenstine reiterated the agency’s support for Gateway. The Artemis-3 mission will not use it in four years, but it will eventually happen: “We absolutely need a Gateway,” he said.

Douglas Loverro, Associate Administrator, NASA Human Explorations and Operations Mission Directorate, commented: “With these awards we begin an exciting partnership with the best in the industry to achieve the nation’s goals. We have a lot of work ahead of us, especially during these next critical 10 months. ” “

In the 1960s and 1970s, NASA launched seven missions intended to land on the Moon under the Apollo program. Apollo 13 did not land after an oxygen tank exploded. The last manned mission was Apollo 17, which explored the Taurus-Littrow Valley of the Moon in December 1972.

But this time, NASA wants to establish a long-term presence.

“We will not return to the Moon to leave flags and footprints and then we will not return for another 50 years,” said Jim Bridenstine last year. “We are going to go sustainably, to stay, with landers and robots, rovers and humans.”

The space agency is acting on a space policy directive signed by President Donald Trump in 2017. It instructs NASA to return American astronauts to the Moon and “other destinations.”

Some in the spaceflight community see the Moon as a potential testing ground for capabilities that would help humans make a successful journey to Mars sometime in the coming decades.

SpaceX included plans for an unmanned test landing on the Moon in its proposal to NASA. Dynetics says it will conduct a demonstration flight to test the key capabilities of its landing system before a mission to the lunar surface.

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