Artemis Lunar Lander Award Announcement

At 1:00 PM EDT (17:00 UTC) -- like in about 5 minutes after I write this -- NASA will hold a media telephone conference to announce the companies chosen to do the next phase of development of the lunar lander for the Artemis project that will put the next people on the moon. The plan is to pick one of these three for the final design.

NASA to Announce Commercial Human Lander Awards for Artemis Moon Missions

NASA live stream YouTube channel:
(note that this is a live stream and will not be the Artemis conference call once it is done. If they later have a recorded replay of the press teleconference, I'll try to post it here or another post below)


Link to NASA TV feed: www.nasa.gov...

The three companies that will go into further development will be Bue Origin (the "National Team" of Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Draper lab), Dynetics, and SpaceX.

Blue Origin/National Team:
twitter.com...

Blue Origin, the lead contractor on the team, is owned by Jeff Bezos (of Amazon).

Northrup Grumman, who is a member of the National Team, designed and built the Lunar Module for the Apollo Program (when they were just "Grumman"). Lockheed Martin designed the Orion Crew capsule, which -- for now -- will need to dock with the lander, no matter who makes it (see SpaceX below).

The Blue Origin/National Team design is in concept similar to the Apollo LM in that it has a separate ascent stage and the descent stage will be left behind. NASA wants the lander to be as reusable as possible, and it would seem this design is not fully reusable



Dynetics:
twitter.com...

Dynetics is unique in that it is a single stage (not two separate stages like Blur Origin and lik ethe Apollo LM was), and the crew cabin is closer to the surface for ease of exiting/entering for EVA.



SpaceX:
twitter.com...

SpaceX's Starship will likely not be ready to go to the Moon at the time NASA wants to do so (NASA says 2024, but that may/will likely slip). Nor does SpaceX have a capsule that will likely be human-rated to go to the moon by then.

So if SpaceX is chosen, it is my opinion that the Starship design pictured below will NOT be the one they use for the Artemis landing that is supposed to happen in 2024. It will likely be something else, although it might still be fully reusable like the Starship.

Having said that, the Starship-style design might be something to consider for the future, especially if it is also able to bring heavy equipment with it.

A Washington Post article on the announcement:

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk win contracts for spacecraft to land NASA astronauts on the moon

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

I like the Dynetics design the best. Seems like it is more in line with what NASA is looking for.
The SpaceX design looks like it would fall over even if everything went well during a landing.

I was going to post about this but fortunately I found your thread first. Thank you!
I'm very excited for this and am going to be keeping an eye on any updates.

~Sovereign

originally posted by: butcherguy
a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

I like the Dynetics design the best. Seems like it is more in line with what NASA is looking for.
The SpaceX design looks like it would fall over even if everything went well during a landing.

The Dynetics design seems to be the most straightforward "designed for the task of getting people on the Moon," but I wonder how much room there is for payloads (equipment, experiments, etc). For example, the Apollo LM had payload bays in the corners and slung onto the sides of the descent stage.

Maybe the Dynetics design has a trunk in the back we can't see in the image.

The National Team design (at least in the pictures) seems to have payloads slung under the descent stage.

I assume the SpaceX design, given its height, also has room for payloads.

* Double Post

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Great

They have a lander, but no booster to launch it there

Boeing has bunged up the SLS Its years late and billions over budget

Even if can get it to fly is so expensive , 750 - 1 billion a shot, that would bust budget in 2-3 launches

Can you say SPACE X …..??

It looks a loooooooong way down for the Blue Origin guys Very big Giant Leap.

It looks a loooooooong way down for the Blue Origin guys Very big Giant Leap.

a reply to: OneBigMonkeyToo


Yeh, buts its only 1/6 gravity so wont hurt as much when you fall ……...

Why do I feel like all we'll get are a lot of plans but the thing will never happen? Oh, yeah. History.

White collar welfare at its finest. Can't have our aerospace engineers unemployed and looking for work at the competition, can we?