Multiple private spacecraft will be ferrying NASA astronauts to the surface
of the moon just a few years from now, if all goes according to plan.
In April 2021, NASA picked SpaceX to build the first crewed lunar lander for
the agency's Artemis program, which is working to put astronauts on the moon
in the mid-2020s and establish a sustainable human presence on and around
Earth's nearest neighbor by the end of the decade.
But SpaceX apparently won't have the moon-landing market cornered: NASA
announced today (March 23) that it plans to support the development of a
second privately built crewed lunar lander.
"This strategy expedites progress toward a long-term, sustaining lander
capability as early as the 2026 or 2027 timeframe," Lisa Watson-Morgan,
program manager for the Human Landing System Program at NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center in Alabama, said in a statement today.
"We expect to have two companies safely carry astronauts in their landers to
the surface of the moon under NASA's guidance before we ask for services,
which could result in multiple experienced providers in the market,"
Watson-Morgan added.
This new plan isn't all that new, however. NASA originally intended to
select multiple private crewed landers for Artemis, to have redundancy in
place and to drive the teams building the vehicles through competition. But
Congress didn't allocate enough funding to support the development of
multiple vehicles, so NASA went solely with SpaceX in April 2021.
That decision spurred protests from the other two finalists for the award,
Dynetics and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. Along with a public letter from Bezos
to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson criticizing the decision, Blue Origin
filed a lawsuit, which ultimately failed but held up SpaceX's lander
development work for about seven months.
There were even more twists to come, however. In October 2021, the Senate
Appropriations Committee directed NASA to choose a second company to develop
a crewed moon lander. The funding increase attached to this order was quite
small — but NASA apparently now has assurances that the necessary money will
come to support the second lander.
Congress is "committed to ensuring that we have more than one lander to
choose [from] for future missions," Nelson said during a news conference
today, citing conversations he's had with people on Capitol Hill over the
past year.
"We're expecting to have both Congress support and that of the Biden
administration," Nelson said. "And we're expecting to get this competition
started in the fiscal year [20]23 budget."
Exact funding amounts and other details should be coming next week when the
White House releases its 2023 federal budget request, he added.
"So what we're doing today is a bit of a preview," Nelson said. "I think
you'll find it's an indication that there are good things to come for this
agency and, if we're right, good things to come for all of humanity."
NASA plans to release a draft request for proposals (RFP) for the second
moon lander by the end of the month and a final RFP later this spring,
agency officials said. If all goes according to plan, NASA will pick the
builder of the new vehicle in early 2023. That craft will have the ability
to dock with Gateway, the small moon-orbiting space station that NASA plans
to build, and take people and scientific gear from there to the surface (and
back).
This newly announced competition will be open to all American companies
except SpaceX. But Elon Musk's company will have the opportunity to
negotiate the terms of its existing contract to perform additional lunar
development work, NASA officials said during today's news conference.
SpaceX is scheduled to land NASA's Artemis 3 mission on the lunar surface in
2025 or 2026 — the first crewed moon touchdown since Apollo 17 in 1972. The
company will use its huge, reusable Starship vehicle for the job. (SpaceX
also plans to conduct an uncrewed test flight to the lunar surface with
Starship, which is expected in 2024.) The Artemis 3 plan is unaffected by
today's announcement, NASA officials said.
Artemis hardware goes beyond Gateway and private landers. The program also
depends on a giant new NASA rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) and
the Orion crew capsule.
The SLS and Orion that will fly the Artemis 1 mission just rolled out to the
launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida last week for testing.
Artemis 1, which will send Orion on an uncrewed journey around the moon, is
expected to launch no earlier than May.
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Space & Astrophysics