NASA has chosen SpaceX to build the new lander that will take astronauts to the moon for the first time more than half a century. SpaceX emerged as the winner of the Artemis mission bidding process that will send humans to the moon in 2024.
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Plans for the first Artemis journey has already been detailed. Four astronauts will launch in the Orion spacecraft on NASA’s Space Launch System, and then two of them will board SpaceX’s lunar lander. It is planned that they will spend about a week on the moon’s service, then head back to Orion. SpaceX will prove the technology works to a large degree before any astronauts will board – they need to do a non-crewed flight of the lander before any astronauts climb onboard.
After the announcement, Human Lander Selection program manager Lisa Watson Morgan commented on winning the contract.
“There is important work for us ahead, just not at the funding levels we initially expected,” Morgan wrote in her email. With only one partner, the number of people who work on the program will also be reduced, she wrote. The agency chose to award only one partner in order to get the program running quickly,” she said.
The Artemis missions will also land women on the moon for the first time.
“The human landing system is going to allow us to be able to access different parts of the lunar surface,” said Kathy Lauders, the associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, in a NASA livestream. “It also allows us to explore new technology and capabilities that will help us when we are trying to figure out our next round of technologies to be able to help us land on Mars or other planets out there.”
