Nasa chooses nine companies to bid for a flight to Moon, Transport

Fri 30 Nov 2018 – 06:53

[WASHINGTON] The US space agency said Thursday that nine private companies, mostly start-ups, would make a US $ 2.6 billion deal to build a plane to transport payloads to the moon. from 2019.

This move is part of NASA's goal of sending people to the moon over the next decade, for the first time since the Apollo era in the '60s and' 70s.

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has called the announcement "tangible progress in America's return to the surface of the moon."

The only well-known name of the group is the aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, who has a long track record of success with NASA and has built the InSight lander that landed on Monday on Mars.

The others are Astrobotic Technology, Inc.; Deep space systems; Drape; Firefly Aerospace, Inc .; Intuitive Machines, LLC; Masten Space Systems, Inc .; Moon Express; and orbit beyond.

"Lunar payload commercial contracts are indefinite-term, indeterminate-quantity contracts with a maximum contract value of $ 2.6 billion over the next 10 years," said a statement from NASA.

NASA has not given details on the bidding process, except to say that it will review a number of factors when comparing bids, such as the technical feasibility, price and timing ".

This decision marks a radical change in NASA's mode of operation regarding the aspirations of the Moon in the United States – although private companies have been used for years to transport gear to the International Space Station, and SpaceX and Boeing are working on a spacecraft to transport astronauts to the moon. from 2019.

Instead of running a government-funded space program like Apollo, the US Space Agency will purchase services, essentially becoming a customer for private companies that build their own spacecraft.

This approach will enable NASA to reduce costs, said Bridenstine.

Earlier this year, NASA canceled its only robotic vehicle under development to explore the surface of the Moon, known as the Resource Prospector (RP) mission.

The vehicle had been in development for about a decade to explore a polar region of the moon.

In 2017, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would send people back to the lunar surface, which would be a milestone on the way to sending people to Mars by 2030.

NASA's current plan is to begin by sending gear to the moon and building a lunar station in orbit from 2022.

By 2023, the first rocket would carry astronauts around the Moon, in an orbit even more distant than the Apollo missions.

According to NASA, the landing on the moon of true astronauts will probably not happen until the end of the 2020s.

AFP