Lockheed Martin
NASA is moving forward with its plans to incorporate competition into lander development for its Artemis Moon program. This week, the space agency said it had selected five U.S. companies to carry out additional work to perfect the concepts of lunar landing to bring astronauts to the surface of the Moon by the end of this decade.
The combined value of the fixed-price awards is $ 146 million and the work is to be completed over 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 of Hawthorne, California, $ 9.4 million
According to NASA, each of these companies will further develop lander design concepts and evaluate the performance, design, mission guarantee requirements of the landers, and more. Companies will also mitigate the risks of lunar landing by conducting critical component testing and advancing the maturity of key technologies.
“Establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon through recurring services through lunar landings is one of Artemis’ main goals, ”Kathy Lueders, head of human spaceflight at NASA, said in a statement. “This critical step lays the groundwork for U.S. leadership to learn more about the Moon and to learn to live and work in deep space for future missions later in the Solar System.”
The awards come about five months after NASA selected SpaceX to refine its Starship vehicle for a demonstration of landing on the Moon and a subsequent crew landing on the Moon. NASA expected to fund two suppliers in April, but Congress only appropriated a quarter of the amount of money NASA sought. Thus, SpaceX received the total value of $ 2.899 billion in five years.
To maintain a competitive environment, NASA said it would move to acquiring “recurring landing services” from U.S. companies. This contract will be for operational missions to the lunar surface after SpaceX demonstration missions. The space agency said the awards announced this week “will ultimately help define the strategy and requirements for a future NASA application to provide regular transport of astronauts from lunar orbit to on the surface of the Moon “. The amount of these future “recurring services” awards will be determined by the endowments of Congress.
Following the SpaceX award in April, the other two finalists for a lunar landing contract, the national team led by Blue Origin and Dynetics, protested in front of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. This protest was denied and, since then, Blue Origin has sued NASA in the U.S. Federal Claims Court to overturn the awards. The dispute is pending.
Blue Origin and two other members of the national team – Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman – were one of the winners of this week’s new smaller awards. One such company, Northrop Grumman, said it remained committed to the national team, but kept its options open.
“We continue to work with Blue Origin and the national team to achieve NASA’s ambitious goals of returning to the Moon and Mars,” said Steve Kerin, vice president of civilian and commercial satellites at 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 to the Moon to stay.”
A source confirmed that the national team is likely to stay together as long as there is a chance of winning the original contract, awarded solely to SpaceX. But if this challenge is not successful, the individual members of the national team are prepared to follow their own paths. The 15 month period will provide time to review your options.