NASA picks three space giants to design the next lunar lander for 2024 moonshot
The SpaceX Starship vehicle being developed in Texas is among three human landing systems that NASA could use to land astronauts on the moon.
NASA on Thursday announced its selection of SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics to develop vehicles that will help the government agency in its effort to reach the moon in 2024.
“This is the last piece that we need in order to get to the moon, and now we’re going to have that under development,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said during a news conference.
NASA’s Artemis program is working to create a sustained human presence on the moon. The agency is developing its own Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to get the first woman and the next man to the lunar surface. And then it’s partnering with commercial companies on other facets of returning to the moon. Houston-based Intuitive Machines, for instance, is building an uncrewed lunar lander to carry science and technology payloads to the moon.
For the human landers, a combined $967 million will be awarded to the three companies for a 10month base period ending in February 2021, according to NASA. During the base period, NASA teams will be embedded with the companies as they refine their human lander designs. NASA will then select which of the companies gets to build landers for NASA’s first missions to the moon. NASA could return to the other companies as it looks to build a more sustainable presence with more frequent trips to the lunar surface.
And ultimately the companies — not NASA — will own these landers. It’s the latest example of NASA seeking to be one of many customers rather than a vehicle’s owner and operator.
“We’ve got these great companies that have many years of history, but we also have great companies that have already invested so much of their own resources
into this effort,” Bridenstine said. “We’re further ahead than many people might believe based on the fact that we’re making the announcement today.”
It nevertheless remains an extremely ambitious timeline. “I think 2024 has always been pretty unrealistic and it’s more of a political decision than anything else,” said Patrick Rodi, a professor of mechanical engineering at Rice University. He previously worked at Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for NASA’s Orion spacecraft. “Even before the pandemic that was not very obtainable.”
Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX proposed using its Starship vehicle, a reusable launch and landing system that’s being developed and tested outside of Brownsville. Blue Origin, which is based in Kent, Wash. but has a West Texas launch site where it does some testing, is partnering with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper to develop the Integrated Lander Vehicle. And Huntsville, Ala.-based Dynetics, a company that has worked with NASA for decades and was acquired by Leidos Holdings in January, is working with more than 25 subcontractors to develop its Dynetics Human Landing System.
Two of the companies were founded by billionaire space enthusiasts: Elon Musk founded SpaceX and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin. This is Blue Origin’s first big contract with NASA. The company has been relatively quiet about its progress, so it will be interesting to learn more about Blue Origin through this public contract, said Rodi.
Absent from the list of companies building human landers is aerospace stalwart Boeing, which has hit some snags lately with its CST-100 Starliner spacecraft designed to take astronauts to the International Space Station. Boeing is also prime contractor for the Space Launch System rocket’s core stage. This project is behind schedule and over budget, though it is now approaching a key engine test.
“While Boeing is disappointed not to have been selected for (the Human Landing Systems), we remain focused on delivering our elements of NASA’s Space Launch System, the rocket that will take Americans to the Moon and Mars,” Boeing said in a statement.
Rodi said contract evaluations do consider a company’s past performance, but he didn’t think this was the deciding factor for Boeing. He said the other companies, particularly those backed by enthusiastic billionaires, likely offered lower prices.
One thing from Thursday’s announcement did stand out to Rodi. All three companies proposed launching their lunar landers on commercial rockets that have not yet flown: Blue Origin’s New Glenn, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur and SpaceX’s Super Heavy. This adds another hurdle for the already ambitious timeline of reaching the moon in 2024, he said.
But NASA and its commercial partners remained optimistic on Thursday. And they said 2024 is just the starting point for learning to live on another planet and continuing on to Mars.
“We’re ready to go to work,” said Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith. “And we’re going to go do everything in our power to move quickly to get us to the moon safely and without sacrificing the ability to go there in a sustainable fashion. That’s how we’ll build a future in space step by step.”