Last week, NASA quietly delayed its plan to award two high-crew monthly landing contracts, pushing the finish line two months back for a crucial program according to the administration’s hasty schedule. Trump will bring astronauts to the moon in 2024. With short funding from Congress and a new administration focused on more pressing national issues, the move was expected.
SpaceX by Elon Musk, a team of aerospace giants led by Blue Origin and Jeff Dynetics owned by Leidos, by Jeff Bezos earned a total of $ 967 million in funding NASA seeds last year to develop rival concepts for a human monthly landing system. This is the space agency’s first effort to spend money on Apollo astronaut lunar landings in the 1970s.
Last Wednesday, NASA told the three contractors that “an extension of the development contracts will be necessary”, choosing a new award date for April 30. According to the Trump administration’s program, the agency had planned to select two of the three bidders in late February, awarding a stamp of approval to two systems that would inevitably draw people to the moon.
The delay was almost certain: the spending bill passed by Congress in December gave NASA $ 850 million for the Human Landing System program, well below the $ 3.2 billion it needed to complete the 2024 program. NASA remained engaged on the February award date, as did 2024. A delay was also expected, with Biden’s team postponing the launch of any space policy and focusing more on climate change and the fight against the pandemic. which makes the long-term fate of NASA’s Artemis program uncertain.
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Now, NASA says the delay is designed to give it more time to evaluate bidders’ proposals and to “maintain the smooth transition capacity” of the development phase, but added that it may not take a while. full extension and could award landing contracts. before. The extension gives companies more time to design and develop their landing systems, NASA said.
The terrain for SpaceX’s monthly landing to NASA is Starship, a fully reusable, approximately 16-story vehicle that the company launched and landed on short suborbital test flights – called “jumps” – in Boca Chica, Texas. The company’s development funds amounted to $ 135 million.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin received the largest prize, $ 579 million, for the development of Lander Blue Moon. The company announced a “national teamIn 2019, composed of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper to work on the project. Dynetics raised $ 253 million for the lander and partnered with Sierra Nevada Corp.
The Biden administration has not yet elected its NASA administrator or launched space policy goals, but is expected to slow the Artemis on the Moon sprint to 2024 – once widely considered unrealistic. This month, the administration ad his team for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, electing pioneering geneticist Eric Lander as Biden’s chief adviser.
Jim Bridenstine, Trump’s NASA chief he left office on the day of the inauguration after serving since 2018 and generating the Artemis program. He handed over control of agency no. 2, Steve Jurczyk, acting interim administrator.
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