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NASA has chosen the first commercial companies that will carry the agency's equipment on the moon in the run-up to the human landing in 2024: Astrobotics, intuitive machines and orbit beyond.
The companies will build lunar landers to carry NASA's scientific experiments and technological demonstrations on the lunar surface. These flights will be the first step in the agency's ambitious Artemis program aimed at the land of humans on the moon in 2024. The first mission of Orbit Beyond will be launched in September 2020. The other two will be launched in the summer of 2021.
"It's really exciting, it's a new way of doing business at NASA," said today (May 31) Thomas Zurbuchen, chief executive officer of NASA's science mission, his announcement at the Goddard Space Flight Center of the agency in Maryland. "We are eager to do the science we want to do with the instruments we are developing right now – a science for which we often did not know how to ask questions even five years ago."
Related: The complete set of NASA lunar missions before the departure of astronauts
Illustration of a private lunar lander built by Astrobotic, which NASA has chosen as one of its first trading partners for the lunar lander. It will be launched in June 2021.
(Image: © Astrobotic)
Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and Orbit Beyond each offer a selection of Useful charges from NASA which are intended either to answer scientific questions on the moon, or to test new technologies developed by engineers to advance space exploration.
NASA provides each company with money to work on their landers: $ 79.5 million to Astrobotic, $ 77 million to Intuitive Machines and $ 97 million to Orbit Beyond.
NASA has not yet decided precisely which payloads will fly on which undercarriage; the agency intends to do so later this year. Astrobotic announced that it could carry up to 14 payloads for NASA, Intuitive Machines five and Orbit Beyond Furnace.
But the lender of each company will carry more than the payloads of NASA. Orbit Beyond presented a small demonstration rover as well as its LG model at the event organized by NASA to announce its trading partners. Astrobotic has also announced its intention to carry rovers on its lunar lander.
Artist illustration representing a commercial lunar lander built by Intuitive Machines, selected by NASA as a trading partner of lunar science. It will be launched in July 2021.
(Image: © Intuitive Machines)
Two of the selected companies plan to launch their missions in two years.
Astrobotic plans to launch his lander in June 2021 and land in July 2021; Intuitive machines for launch and landing in July 2021. Orbit Beyond clearly pushes back the deadline: the company told NASA that it could land on the moon on September 27, 2020.
Today's announcement follows the selection of nine finalist companies, which were announced in November. At the time, NASA had not given any details about the specific criteria that had guided its choices.
Since that announcement, President Donald Trump 's administration has aggressively condensed NASA' s schedule to return to the moon, shifting the goal of the human landing from 2028 to 2024.
Artistic illustration of a private lunar lander from Orbit Beyond, who will launch NASA payloads to the lunar surface in July 2021. The LG will include a small rover and land in a plain of lava in one of the craters of the moon.
(Image: © Orbit Beyond)
Zurbuchen spoke in front of the models of each of the three selected undercarriages in the same room in which NASA engineers had built the Hubble Space Telescope and assembled the James Webb Space Telescope Mirror, which should also be launched in 2021.
Today's announcement follows another major decision by NASA in the area of commercial partnership regarding its Moon program.
On May 23, NASA announced that it had chosen Maxar to build the power and propulsion component of the Gateway, a lunar-orbiting station intended to serve as a platform for missions. to the surface of the moon. The Space Agency is also evaluating six potential habitat module designs for hosting astronauts on the bridge.
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her. @meghanbartels. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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