NASA Selects Three Companies to Design New Lunar Landing Craft

WASHINGTON – NASA awarded contracts to three companies on Thursday to design and develop human landing systems, one of which will land the first woman and next man on the surface of the Moon by 2024 as part of the agency’s Artemis program.
The contracts were awarded to Blue Origin, a Kent, Washington-based company owned by Jeff Bezos, Dynetics, of Huntsville, Alabama, and SpaceX, a Hawthorne, California-based company founded by Elon Musk.
The total combined value for all awarded contracts is $967 million for a 10-month base period.
“This is the first time since the Apollo era that NASA has direct funding for a human landing system,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in a written statement.
The three companies have until February 2021 to refine their concepts. NASA will evaluate which of the contractors will perform initial demonstration missions, and then later select firms for developing sustainable lander systems and sustainable demonstration missions.
“I am confident in NASA’s partnership with these companies to help achieve the Artemis mission and develop the human landing system returning us to the Moon,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan, HLS program manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “We have a history of proven lunar technical expertise and capabilities at Marshall and across NASA that will pave the way for our efforts to quickly and safely land humans on the Moon in 2024.”
In The News
Health
Voting
Science

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA on Monday released the first high-quality video of a spacecraft landing on Mars, a three-minute trailer showing the enormous orange and white parachute hurtling open and the red dust kicking up as rocket engines lowered the rover to the surface.The... Read More

NASA will be making its most precise and technologically complex landing yet when its Perseverance rover lands on Mars later on this week. The landing will be the space agency’s fifth rover mission on Mars. “Perseverance is NASA’s most ambitious Mars rover mission yet, focused scientifically... Read More

NASA has selected SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., to provide launch services for the agency’s Power and Propulsion Element and Habitation and Logistics Outpost, the foundational elements of the "Gateway" -- the first long-term orbiting outpost around the Moon. The Gateway is critical to supporting sustainable astronaut... Read More

WASHINGTON (AP) — Not only are humans changing the surface and temperature of the planet, but also its sounds – and those shifts are detectable even in the open ocean, according to research published Thursday. Changes in the ocean soundscape affect wide swaths of marine life,... Read More

Two new studies paint a clear picture of the long-lasting, corrosive effects of poor sleep on the brain by linking neighborhood conditions to memory loss and cognitive performance in adolescents. The first study found that persistent loud noises and other hallmarks of poorer neighborhoods, such as... Read More

The COVID-19 vaccines rolling out across the nation are lifting spirits over the holidays. But there's also budding concern about new strains of the virus that have been discovered in Great Britain, South Africa and possibly in Nigeria. Scientists say they are hopeful, but unsure, that... Read More