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Lockheed Martin
NASA is moving forward with plans to introduce competition in the development of landers for its Artemis Moon program. This week, the space agency said it had selected five U.S. companies to do additional work to refine lunar lander concepts to take astronauts to the moon’s surface later this decade.
The combined value of the fixed price awards is $ 146 million, and the work is expected to be completed within the next 15 months. The winning companies are:
- Blue Origin Federation of Kent, Washington, $ 25.6 million
- Dynetics of Huntsville, Alabama, $ 40.8 million
- Lockheed Martin of Littleton, Colorado, $ 35.2 million
- Northrop Grumman of Dulles, Virginia, $ 34.8 million
- SpaceX from Hawthorne, Calif., $ 9.4 million
According to NASA, each of these companies will further develop landing gear design concepts and assess landing gear performance, design, mission assurance requirements, etc. Companies will also mitigate risks associated with lunar landers by performing tests of critical components and advancing the maturity of key technologies.
“Establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon through recurring services using lunar landers is a major goal of Artemis,” said Kathy Lueders, chief of human spaceflight at NASA, in a statement. “This critical step lays the foundation for American leadership in learning more about the Moon and in learning to live and work in deep space for future missions further into the solar system.”
The awards come about five months after NASA selected SpaceX to refine its Starship vehicle for a demonstration moon landing and subsequent moon crew. NASA had hoped to fund two vendors in April, but Congress only appropriated a quarter of the amount NASA requested. SpaceX therefore received a total value of $ 2.89 billion over five years.
To maintain a competitive environment, NASA has said it will procure “recurring landing services” from US companies. This contract will cover operational missions to the lunar surface following SpaceX’s demonstration missions. The space agency said the awards announced this week “would ultimately help define the strategy and requirements for a future NASA solicitation to provide regular transport of astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface. from the moon “. The amount of such future “recurring service” rewards will be determined by Congress appropriations.
After the SpaceX award in April, the other two finalists for a lunar lander contract, the national team led by Blue Origin and Dynetics, protested to the US Government Accountability Office. This protest was dismissed and Blue Origin has since taken NASA to the United States Federal Claims Court to overturn the awards. The litigation is ongoing.
Blue Origin and two other members of the national team, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, were among the winners of the new, more modest awards this week. One of those companies, Northrop Grumman, said it remains committed to the national team but also keeps its options open.
“We continue to work in partnership with Blue Origin and the National Team to achieve NASA’s ambitious goals of returning to the Moon and Mars,” said Steve Krein, vice president of civil and commercial satellites for Northrop Grumman. “In addition to these collective efforts, we also provide our unique skills and abilities to explore alternative perspectives for a long-term sustainable program to bring humans back to the Moon to stay there.”
A source has confirmed that the national team is likely to stick together as long as there is a chance to win the initial contract, awarded only to SpaceX. But if that challenge fails, individual members of the national team prepare to go their own way. The 15 month period will give them time to consider their options.
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