SpaceX, Blue Origin awarded contracts to NASA to develop lunar lander concepts for future Artemis missions – TechCrunch

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NASA awarded a total of $ 146 million in contracts to five companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics, to develop lander concepts as part of the agencies’ Artemis program.

Awards include $ 26.5 million to Blue Origin; $ 40.8 million to Dynetics; $ 35.2 million to Lockheed Martin; $ 34.8 million to Northrop Grumman; and $ 9.4 million to SpaceX. Only two companies that submitted proposals, Blue Ridge Nebula Starlines and Cook & Chevalier Enterprises, did not receive contracts.

The contracts were awarded under NextSTEP-2 (Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships) Appendix N: Studies on the sustainable human landing system and risk reduction. The solicitation, published in early July, states that the goal of the contract is to engage with potential business partners for concept studies, supporting the development of the concept of HLS (ground and in-flight) operations and risk reduction activities. .

This means in practice that the selected companies will develop lander design concepts, including conducting component tests, and evaluate them for aspects such as performance and safety.

These awards are separate from the Human Landing System contract that was awarded to SpaceX earlier this year, the one that both Blue Origin and Dynetics contested to a government watchdog and which Blue Origin later opposed in a lawsuit. against NASA which is still ongoing.

However, the outcome of this series of assignments will likely affect future lander development contracts for the remainder of the decade. The work of these companies will ultimately help define the strategy and requirements for a future NASA solicitation to provide smooth transportation of astronauts from the lunar orbit to the surface of the moon, the agency said in a statement.

The Artemis program was established in 2020 with a number of goals, not only to bring humans back to the moon for the first time since Apollo, but also to make that travel routine by the end of the 2020s. NASA does not it only stops on the moon; the agency also wants to expand into interplanetary exploration, including human missions to Mars.

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