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Luna, a second lander for NASA in addition to that of SpaceX

2022-03-29T09:00:13.028Z


NASA intends to find a new private partner in addition to SpaceX to develop a second lunar lander with which to transport the astronauts of future Artemis missions (ANSA)


NASA intends to find a new private partner in addition to SpaceX to develop a second lunar lander with which to transport the astronauts of future Artemis missions to the Moon: the goal is to have more companies dedicated to this kind of service, in order to guarantee a system of redundant and efficient transport within a few years.

To achieve this, the American space agency intends to pursue two parallel paths.

It has already undertaken the first in April 2021, signing a first agreement with Elon Musk's SpaceX which provides for a demonstration mission no earlier than April 2025. Also within the scope of that agreement, NASA now intends to ask SpaceX to transform the company's proposed human landing system into a spacecraft that meets the requirements for recurring services for a second demonstration mission.

At the same time, thanks to new government funding, NASA wants to identify a second private partner on the market: for this reason, in the coming weeks it will ask American companies to propose new lander concepts capable of ferrying astronauts between orbit and the lunar surface for subsequent missions to Artemis III.

"This strategy accelerates progress towards sustainable, long-term landing capability as early as 2026 or 2027," said Lisa Watson-Morgan, head of the Human Landing System program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

"We expect to have two companies safely transport astronauts in their landers to the surface of the moon under the guidance of NASA before asking for services,"

The decision to develop several landers with competing partners was already in NASA's original plans, but then the lack of funds from the American Congress had led to focus everything on SpaceX: the decision had raised controversy, even from others two companies that had participated in the tender, namely Blue Origin by Jeff Bezos and Dynetics.

Source: ansa

All tech articles on 2022-03-29

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