Musk SpaceX, Bezos’s Blue Origin Land Contracts for Construction of NASA Astronaut Moon Lander

NASA on Thursday selected space agency SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynamics to build lunar landing systems that could take astronauts to the moon by 2024 under the Space Agency’s Moon to Mars expedition to the White House’s quick deadline.

The three companies, including the firms of tech billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, will share $ 967 million (about Rs 7,300 crore) from NASA, although the specific amounts each company received were not immediately known.

Boeing proposed a lander concept last year but was not selected.

“This is the last piece to receive the moon, which we called the agency’s first lunar lander procurement since 1972,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters on Thursday.

Unlike the Apollo program that placed astronauts on the moon nearly 50 years ago, NASA is poised for a long-term presence on Earth’s satellite that the agency says will eventually enable humans to arrive on Mars, which is the source of nearly all shared lions Private companies created for. Space exploration.

Taking three providers allows NASA to lag behind in a company’s growth in terms of redundancy, NASA’s Human Landing System Program Manager, Lisa Watson-Morgan, told reporters on Thursday.

“I think we’ve got the potential for an incredibly exciting future in space with a base on the moon, and eventually sending people and a self-sufficient city on Mars,” Musk, who owns electric car firm Tesla Also lead, said on Thursday. .

Last year Bezos unveiled the design of Blue Origin for the Lunar lander, Blue Moon, which it intends to build with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper as a prime contractor. Blue Origin plans to launch its own landing system using its own massive rocket, New Glenn.

Musk’s SpaceX, which is on the verge of starting its first manned mission to NASA next month, will develop its starship landing system to send crew and up to 100 pounds of cargo to the moon.

Dyndix, a unit of Lidos Holdings, develops human landing systems, which the Boeing-locked joint venture, United Launch Alliance, will launch on its Vulcan system.

Boeing was not picked
up, severed by a major NASA spacecraft effort, Boeing suffered a setback to the giant space arm of aerospace, which has been a major International Space Station contractor for decades, and recently a secondary provider of NASA Has started efforts to bring humans to the station. Commercial Crew Program.

NASA said it eliminated Boeing and another company as the first bidder for the lunar lander award in the selection process, although a specific reason was not immediately clear.

Last month, Boeing lost to competitor SpaceX in a separate competition for cargo delivery services for a lunar space station, with NASA stating in a memo “Boeing’s offer was the highest price and lowest rated under the mission suitability factor” I went.”

NASA has in recent months called on Boeing to call for various agency programs, such as delays in its massive rocket space launch system, which lag behind time, exceed billions of budgets, and dozens of engineering failures. Has been accelerated to

The space launch system, which has not yet flown, is currently a NASA ride to transport humans to Earth and the Moon by 2024, but the rocket’s first mission is back in 2021, just over a year ago.