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
Researchers from Emory University are working on a National Institutes of Health-supported project to develop a sensor capable of detecting COVID-19 in the air, called Rolosense. “It’s tricky to anticipate what the real-world implementation will be of this technology, but we anticipate this will fill a... Read More
According to a recent study which followed a cohort of Israeli children there is little chance that kids up to age 9 will spread COVID-19 while returning to school. “The main question was whether school reopening was accompanied by higher rates of COVID-19 infections in children,... Read More
This article is by Prachi Patel and was originally published by Anthropocene magazine. The world drinks a whole lot of coffee. And in the process produces over six million tons of coffee grounds, according to the International Coffee Organization. And much of that ends up in... Read More
WASHINGTON (AP) — Eager to the turn the page on the Trump years, the Biden White House is launching an effort to unearth past problems with the politicization of science within government and to tighten scientific integrity rules for the future. A new 46-person federal scientific... Read More
Last week researchers at the University of California, Davis, published a study about a genetically encoded sensor called “PsychLight,” capable of detecting hallucinogenic compounds in the brain of mice, and how those compounds bind to receptors. “The most shocking thing was the fact that it worked,... Read More
This article is by Emma Bryce and was originally published by Anthropocene magazine. What would you be willing to pay, to ensure your food came from a farm that doubled up to protect biodiversity and mitigate climate change? That’s the question a group of researchers recently... Read More
