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WASHINGTON – NASA is delaying a decision on which companies will continue efforts to develop human lunar landers for the Artemis program as it grapples with a funding gap and a change in administrations.
In a Jan. 27 notice to the three teams participating in the Human Landing System (HLS) program, NASA said it would execute free two-month extensions of their contracts, which were due to end on Feb. 28. The expansion was first reported by The Verge.
The no-cost extensions allow contracts awarded last April to Blue Origin, Dynetics, and SpaceX to end on April 30, but provide no additional funding to companies. The expansion will give NASA more time to determine which companies, if any, will receive “Option A” rewards for lander development.
“The timing of this extension is designed to allow NASA to complete the process of evaluating, selecting and awarding Option A and to preserve the ability to seamlessly contract from the base period to the Option A contracts, ”the agency said in a statement posted on the HLS website.
An industry source, speaking in the background, said the expansion was expected due to uncertainty over how NASA will continue the HLS program. While NASA has said it may award Option A grants by April 30, this source said it would not be surprising to see further delays in the program.
The main reason for this uncertainty is that the amount of funding available for HLS is much less than what the agency requested. NASA’s FY2021 budget request called for $ 3.3 billion for the program, but the final omnibus appropriation bill passed in December provided for $ 850 million.
NASA has said little about the status of the program since then, in part because of its ongoing review of Option A proposals submitted by HLS companies. “Our team is gone and we will make a decision on what systems we invest in their lunar landing demonstrations,” Kathy Lueders, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, at a meeting of the January 14 from two members of the NASA advisory board. committees. She added that NASA “is still running for the period 2024” for this first landing.
But in an interview on Jan. 16 during his last days in office, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine conceded that limited funding would force NASA to change its strategy. The agency had hoped to fund the development of two landing systems in an approach similar to commercial cargo and crew programs, providing competition between companies and safeguard in the event of a business crash.
“The credit we requested was $ 3.3 billion for the Human Landing System. We didn’t get that, ”he said, noting that NASA still had“ a lot ”of funding for the program with bipartisan support.
“NASA needs to go back and look at what the options are to get to the moon as quickly as possible,” he said.
But “as quickly as possible” may not be the 2024 target set by the Trump administration almost two years ago. The Biden administration has yet to comment on its plans for NASA, although the Democratic Party platform has included language endorsing a human return to the moon. This document, however, did not explicitly endorse doing so by 2024, or any other specific date.
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