In a similar tender two years ago, NASA selected the company SpaceX, which had already constructed the Starship transport system also for the purpose of landing on the moon as part of the Artemis mission.
“We want more competition, we want to have two landers, that’s a better option,” NASA chief Bill Nelson explained when announcing the tender result.
“More competition means you have more reliability, you have backup,” he added.
The partner of billionaire Bezos is going to space. With a female crew
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According to Reuters, NASA chose Blue Origin because of the lower cost proposal, the more capabilities its module will have and the promise to conduct two test landings on the moon in 2024 and 2025 at its own expense.
Blue Origin’s Lunar Module Project Manager John Couluris told reporters at the announcement that the company would invest “significantly more” than the $3.4 billion in space shuttle development, but that Blue Origin, not NASA, would cover the over-budget.
Blue Origin plans to collaborate with Lockheed Martin, Draper, Boeing, Astrobotic and Honeybee Robotics on the construction of the 16-meter carrier system and the Blue Moon lunar module.
Bezos wrote on his Twitter that he is “honored to be able to embark on a journey with NASA to land astronauts on the moon.”
Artemis has five phases
The Artemis mission has five planned phases so far, with NASA and SpaceX completing the first of them so far – an unmanned lunar orbit.
The Artemis 2 mission is expected to fly around the moon with a crew in 2024, and the Artemis 3 mission at the end of 2025 should be the first manned landing on the moon since 1972.
The next landings are planned for 2028 and 2029. On the way to the moon, they also count on an intermediate stop at the Gateway space station, which does not yet exist.
It is on the last stage, Artemis 5, that the system from Blue Origin should already work as an extraterrestrial means of transport.
| Musk continues to develop his Starship |
|---|
| In April, the US space agency presented the names of the four astronauts who will fly around the moon at the end of 2024. |
| They are three Americans, one of them a woman, and one Canadian. |
| Meanwhile, billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX continues to develop Starship, which took off for its first test flight at the end of April. |
| Although the transport system exploded after a few minutes, SpaceX called the test a success due to the collected data needed for further launches. |
The first of the new European astronauts will fly into space in 2026
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