NASA Selects Three Companies to Design Commercial Lunar Landers

NASA has selected three companies to make lunar landers for the space agency. The first of the three missions would be launched in September 2020. The flights form the basis for NASA’s plans for a manned moon landing in 2024.

The US space agency announced Friday that it will award contracts to three private companies. These are Orbit Beyond, Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic. The companies will receive $97 million, 77 million and 79.5 million respectively to put landers on the moon. Those landers carry cargoes brought in by NASA itself, which are intended to collect scientific data and try out new technologies. Orbit Beyond also showed its own rover that it wants to take with it.

The missions are a first step in NASA’s plans to go to the moon. The space agency aims to land humans on the moon again by 2024 with the Artemis mission. Another part of that plan is to fly a space station called the Lunar Gateway around the moon, from which astronauts can descend to the celestial body. Last week, NASA also awarded another company, Maxar, a contract to build the energy and propulsion systems for the Lunar Gateway.

The companies themselves have indicated when they think they can launch. For Orbit Beyond that is the fastest: the company says it can go into space in September next year. Astrobotic aims to go up in June 2021, and Intuitive Machines goes a month later. The companies take four, fourteen and five loads up respectively.

The Lander of Astrobotics The Lander of Orbit Beyond