NASA’s three picks for human landing systems for the Artemis program have been confirmed, a shortlist for the system which will land US astronauts on the Moon
NASA’s three picks for human landing systems for the Artemis program have been confirmed, a shortlist for the system which will land US astronauts on the Moon by 2024. The candidate systems each have ten months to demonstrate they’re worthy for the next round of the process. Conspicuously absent from the final three, however, is Boeing.
Instead, it’s SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics which have been selected by NASA. They’ll share just short of a billion dollars for this next phase, with the US space agency relying on private enterprise to do what, fifty years ago, NASA itself undertook to put astronauts on the Moon for the first time.
SpaceX’s plan for the lander is the Starship. It’ll use the company’s Raptor engines and build on the Dragon Crew Capsule technology, which NASA plans to use for a trip to the International Space Station later in the year. For the lunar mission, SpaceX will use the Super Heavy rocket booster for launch from Earth.
In fact, there’ll be several different Starships, configured for different tasks. A propellant Starship, for example, will act as a low-Earth orbit refueling station, with its tanks of fuel topped up by a tanker Starship. Then there’ll be another that’s rated for human occupancy, which will launch to the storage unit, refuel, and then continue on to achieve orbit around the Moon.
Starship is also capable of transporting crew to the Moon’s surface, as well as docking with the Orion spacecraft and with the Gateway outpost that NASA intends to construct.
