NASA wants private moon landers from 3 companies. Here's how they'll work.

NASA wants private moon landers from 3 companies. Here's how they'll work.

SpaceX, Dynetics and a Blue Origin-led team have different ideas for the moon.
NASA has selected a Blue Origin-led team, Dynetics and SpaceX's Starship to develop new moon landers for astronauts for the agency's Artemis lunar program.
The moon landers that three commercial teams are developing to ferry astronauts to and from the lunar surface for NASA are a diverse bunch.
On Thursday (April 30), NASA announced that it had awarded contracts to three commercial teams, each of which will develop a human landing system for use by the space agency's Artemis program. Artemis aims to put two astronauts down near the moon's south pole in 2024 and establish a sustainable presence on and around Earth's natural satellite by the late 2020s.
SpaceX, Dynetics and a team led by Blue Origin will split a total pot of $967 million, which will fund 10 months of development work. NASA will then tab one or more of these teams to mature their systems. In the end, the space agency will procure crewed lunar transportation services from the options that are left on the table.
The options are, at this early stage anyway, quite varied, for the commercial teams are taking very different approaches to their landers. SpaceX, for example, will continue developing its Starship deep-space transportation system, which Elon Musk's company envisions making Mars colonization and other bold exploration feats economically feasible.
The 165-foot-tall (50 meters) Starship will launch off Earth atop a giant rocket called Super Heavy. Both of these elements will be reusable; each Super Heavy will come back down for a vertical landing shortly after liftoff, and each Starship will fly many missions once it's aloft, Musk has said. (Starship needs Super Heavy only to get off our planet; the spacecraft will be powerful enough to launch itself off the surface of the moon or Mars.)
Starship will be capable of carrying up to 100 people at a time, Musk has said. NASA wouldn't come close to filling the possible seats on each Artemis flight — the 2024 landing mission, for example, will carry just two astronauts — but the agency would doubtless find a use for all of the vehicle's space and power. (Starship will be able to haul 100 tons of payload to the lunar surface.)
hursday's announcement deepens SpaceX's involvement with NASA's moon-exploration plans, which was already extensive. For example, the company is eligible to deliver robotic NASA payloads to the lunar surface using Starship, work the space agency says will help pave the way for crewed Artemis visits. 
And last month, SpaceX secured a contract to supply Gateway, the small space station that NASA plans to build in lunar orbit as a jumping-off point for surface missions, using an extra-large version of its Dragon cargo capsule. Gateway is an important part of the agency's long-term moon plans but will probably not be involved in the 2024 landing, agency officials have said. 

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