Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been selected as a lunar exploration company by NASA, overtaking Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.
According to foreign media such as Cnet, NASA of the United States announced on the 16th (local time) that it has selected SpaceX as a human landing system provider for the Artemis program.
The Artemis program is a distant space (deep space) exploration plan that was created during the days of former President Donald Trump. The program is pursuing the goal of landing humans on the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo program.
In particular, this program plans to land a female astronaut on the moon for the first time ever.
SpaceX has been working on development with this program in mind. The company has already conducted a test flight of its next-generation spacecraft, Starship, at a development facility on the Texas Gulf Coast.
Not only SpaceX, but also Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Dynetics, a U.S. defense company Raidos, participated in NASA’s selection of a private lunar exploration company.
However, NASA broke the expectation that it would select multiple companies and chose SpaceX alone. The project is worth $2.9 billion.
■ 4 astronauts plan to land on the moon… Including one woman
Astronauts participating in NASA’s Artemis project do not travel from Earth to the moon in SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft.
Initially, the four astronauts will fly to orbit the moon aboard NASA’s space launch system rocket and Orion spacecraft. To this end, NASA plans to build a small space station called Luna Gateway in orbit near the moon.
The astronauts are transferred to the starship that was waiting here and then flew to the surface of the moon. After landing on the moon and doing exploration work for a certain period of time, it is dear to Earth aboard the Orion spacecraft.
In announcing the results of the selection of a private company on the day, NASA said, “Before SpaceX can fly with an astronaut, it will have to perform an experiment to land on the moon by unmanned flight.
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SpaceX has already successfully tested flying to the International Space Station with an astronaut on a crew dragon last year. Foreign media reported that this experiment is in line with the conditions required by NASA.
Initially, NASA wanted to select two private companies to carry out the project. However, due to budget issues, only one was dropped.