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Last week, NASA quietly delayed its plan to award two high-profile manned lunar landing contracts, pushing the finish line by two months for a crucial program under the administration’s rushed schedule. Trump to bring astronauts to the moon in 2024. With short funding from Congress and a new administration focused on more pressing national issues, the move was expected.
SpaceX by Elon Musk, a team of aerospace giants led by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Leidos-owned Dynetics, last year won $ 967 million in seed funding from NASA to develop rival concepts for a human lunar landing system. This is the space agency’s first effort to spend money on astronaut lunar landers since the Apollo program in the 1970s.
Last Wednesday, NASA told the three contractors that an extension of their development contracts “will be necessary”, picking a new award date of April 30. According to the Trump administration’s schedule, the agency had planned to pick two of the three bidders at the end of February, giving a stamp of approval for two systems that would inevitably drag humans to the moon.
The delay was almost certain: The spending bill passed by Congress in December gives NASA $ 850 million for the Human Landing System program, well below the $ 3.2 billion it needed to meet the 2024 timeline. But NASA remained committed to the February award date and, likewise, the 2024 moonshot. A delay was also expected, with Biden’s team delaying the release of any space policy and focusing more on climate change and the fight against the pandemic, which makes the long-term fate of NASA’s Artemis program uncertain.
Now NASA says the delay is designed to give it more time to assess bidders’ proposals and to “preserve the seamless transition capability” of the development phase, but added it might not need to. full extension period and could award landing contracts. earlier. The extension also gives companies more time to design and develop their landing systems, NASA said.
The ground for SpaceX’s lunar lander to NASA is Starship, a fully reusable, approximately 16-story vehicle that the company launched and landed on short suborbital test flights – called “jumps” – in Boca Chica, in. Texas. The company’s development funds amounted to $ 135 million.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin received the biggest award, $ 579 million, for developing his Blue Moon lander. The company announced a “national team” in 2019 consisting of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper to work on the project. Dynetics secured $ 253 million for its lander and partnered with Sierra Nevada Corp.
The Biden administration has yet to choose its NASA administrator or release space policy goals, but is expected to slow the Artemis program’s sprint to the moon by 2024 – a date widely seen as unrealistic. This month, the administration announced its team for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, choosing pioneering geneticist Eric Lander as Biden’s chief science adviser.
Trump’s NASA chief Jim Bridenstine stepped down on inauguration day after serving since 2018 and spawning the Artemis program. He handed over control of the agency to his No. 2, Steve Jurczyk as interim administrator.
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