Nasa to unveil second contract winner for lunar lander mission

 

Officials from the US space agency Nasa are expected to announce the name of the second company Friday, which would be awarded a contract to develop a spacecraft enabling astronauts to travel to the moon’s surface, a high-stakes competition between Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin and a defence manufacturer Northrop Grumman, reported Reuters.

It will become the second company under its Artemis moon programme after awarding Elon Musk's SpaceX $3 billion worth of a contract in 2021 to allow astronauts to land on the moon for the second time after Apollo’s 1972 mission.

Those initial missions using SpaceX's Starship system are slated for later this decade.

Friday's announcement in Washington evokes deja vu for Amazon founder Bezos and defence contractor Dynetics, the head of a partnership with Northrop Grumman.

The companies could not get a contract in 2021, which was secured by Musk’s aerospace company as part of a moon lander procurement program. 

Nasa said it could pick up to two companies under that programme, but blamed budget constraints for only going with SpaceX.

This new offer is a second opportunity to the founder of Amazon who since establishing the company Blue Origin in 2000 poured bullion o dollars to compete for high-level government space projects with SpaceX — a dominant force in satellite launches and human spaceflight.

After losing the contract in 2021, Jeff Bezos’ company unsuccessfully fought to change Nasa’s decision to ignore its Blue Moon lander, first with a watchdog agency and then with the jury.

Legislators and Blue Origin stressed the US space agency to give the second contract for its lunar lander to encourage commercial competition and make sure that it has a backup ride for the lunar mission.

NASA in early 2022 announced the program for a second lander contract.

At the time, NASA chief Bill Nelson said: "I promised competition, so here it is."

Blue Origin did not say enough about its lunar lander proposal beyond naming its corporate partners: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, spacecraft software firm Draper, and robotics firm Astrobotic.

Prior to shifting to its formal rival Dyetics, Northrop Grumman was a key partner in Blue Origin's unsuccessful Blue Moon bid in 2021.

Nasa’s Artemis mission involves a multi-space craft plan involving its Space Launch System rocket launching astronauts toward the moon aboard the Lockheed-built Orion capsule. That will dock in space with a lunar lander to ferry the crew the rest of the way to the moon's surface.