NASA asks for proposals to develop new lunar lander
Elon Musk's private spaceflight company SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin have both tested lander spacecraft in recent months.
Tuesday 1 October 2019 13:34, UK
NASA is seeking proposals for the new lunar lander which will take the first woman and the next man to the surface of the moon.
The proposals will need to come from American companies as part of the space agency's Artemis programme, named after the mythological sister of Apollo, the first moon mission's namesake.
Elon Musk's spaceflight company SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin have both tested spacecraft in recent months which could allow them to contribute towards NASA's moon and Mars missions.
Mr Bezos, the founder of Amazon, announced he was going to send a spaceship to the moon when he unveiled his unmanned lunar lander Blue Moon back in May.
However, Blue Moon is an unmanned robotic lander - unlike SpaceX's Dragon capsule.
The deployment of the Dragon capsule for manned missions has been put on hold after a launchpad test ended in flames.
An investigation subsequently uncovered that a titanium fire was the reason for the explosion.
It was a terrifying moment for the engineers involved in designing the capsule, which is meant to safely carry human passengers in space.
NASA has not commented on what reappraisals it has made as a result of the explosion.
Proposals for the NASA lander are due to be submitted by 1 November, an "ambitious timeline" as the agency acknowledged, although companies will have been preparing since the first open call back in July.
Spaceflight systems "can take six to eight years to develop" said NASA, but there are less than five years to go for the agency to meet the 2024 target.
In order for their proposals to be accepted, the private companies will need to allow NASA access to their companies' systems to monitor progress throughout development.
Described as "a less formal insight model that will be used for accessing critical contractor data while minimising administrative overhead", the move is necessary because of the accelerated timeline.