NASA Wants More Company to Work with SpaceX for the Moon Landing Missions

NASA Wants More Company to Work with SpaceX for the Moon Landing Missions. 

Suppose you’ve been following the progress of NASA‘s future Artemis moon missions. In that case, you’ll know that The American space agency chose Elon Musk’s SpaceX to design and manufacture the lunar landers for personnel last year. 

SpaceX was chosen from a list of three other contenders. NASA has now offered the opportunity to select a business other than SpaceX to build the lunar landers. Let’s take a closer look at the specifics.

According to NASA, the Artemis Missions will be handled by a different company.

NASA selected three space businesses, including SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and a defense supplier named Dynetics, to design and manufacture lunar landers for its Artemis missions in 2020, after showing the new spacesuits for the trip in 2019. 

Last year, the space agency said that SpaceX would be awarded the contract to design and build the human landing systems (HLS) for lunar landings.

NASA now wants a second space business to collaborate with SpaceX on designing a lunar lander for its astronauts. 

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson recently stated that the agency would soon choose the second business to develop the lunar landers for upcoming missions.

In a statement, Nelson said, “I promised competition, so here it is.”

Over the following decade, the second company will need to collaborate with SpaceX engineers to support NASA’s Artemis missions. As a result, these missions will be linked together. 

The firms will build on their previous achievements to help NASA achieve its goal of sending humans back to the Moon for the second time.

The second business would receive funding from NASA for two landings, similar to SpaceX’s deal. One would be a mission without astronauts, demonstrating the spacecraft’s capabilities, while the other would be a mission with astronauts.

The agency will issue a draught request for ideas, with final bids due by summer. While no details on which company will be involved in the Artemis mission have been released, TechCrunch has confirmed that Blue Origin will compete.

Jim Free, NASA’s assistant administrator for exploration systems development, claimed that a crewed trip is planned for 2026 or 2027. In addition, at least one of the astronauts would be a woman, making her the first woman to set foot on the Moon.