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[이데일리 최정희 기자] SpaceX, an American space exploration company founded by Elon Musk Tesla’s CEO, has been selected as a lunar lander operator.
According to the Associated Press, the NASA announced on the 16th (local time) that it has selected SpaceX as the developer of the lunar probe for the’Artemis Project’. It beat Blue Origin, led by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
NASA is pushing ahead with the Artemis project to send mankind back to the moon with the goal of 2024. NASA selected SpaceX as a lunar lander operator worth $2.89 billion and KRW 3.2 trillion, among three candidates, including SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dinetics.
The Artemis project is a lunar landing project that is being re-implemented half a century after the last lunar landing of the Apollo 17 in 1972.
NASA cited as an advantage that SpaceX is developing a reusable launch and landing integrated spacecraft. This method is cheaper than Blue Origin’s lunar lander, which consists of three separate modules: ascent, descent, and transfer.
“The world’s richest men, Bezos and Musk, competed for humanity’s return to the moon, and SpaceX won.” I gave it to you.
NASA plans to take four astronauts into the lunar orbit on an Orion spacecraft under development with Lockheed Martin, and then transfer a pair of male and female astronauts to SpaceX’s’Starship’ lunar lander and send them down to the lunar surface. .