NASA has selected five U.S. companies to help the agency enable a steady pace of crewed trips to the lunar surface under the agency’s Artemis program. The awards under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships Appendix N broad agency announcement are firm fixed-price, milestone-based contracts. The total combined value for the awards is $146 million, and the work will be conducted over the next 15 months.
The companies that received awards and their award values are:
-Blue Origin Federation of Kent, Washington, $25.6 million.
-Dynetics (a Leidos company) of Huntsville, Alabama, $40.8 million.
-Lockheed Martin of Littleton, Colorado, $35.2 million.
-Northrop Grumman of Dulles, Virginia, $34.8 million.
-SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, $9.4 million.
«Establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon through recurring services using lunar landers is a major Artemis goal,» said Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at Headquarters in Washington. «This critical step lays the foundation for U. » NASA’s goals under Artemis include enabling a safe and cost-efficient long-term approach to accessing the lunar surface and becoming one of multiple customers purchasing services in a lunar transportation market. Much of what the agency develops for the Moon will be applied to future exploration at Mars.
NASA’s Artemis missions include landing the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface, sending a suite of new science instruments and technology demonstrations to study the Moon, and establishing a long-term presence there.
Credit NASA