Blue Origin, SpaceX Land NASA Deal

NASA has selected three U.S. companies to design and develop human landing systems for the agency’s Artemis program, one of which is to land the first woman and next man on the surface of the moon by 2024.

The companies include SpaceX, led by Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk, and Blue Origin, founded by Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN CEO Jeff Bezos. 

Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, a privately funded aerospace manufacturer and suborbital spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington.

Blue Origin is developing the Integrated Lander Vehicle — a three-stage lander to be launched on its own New Glenn Rocket System and ULA Vulcan launch system.

Musk’s SpaceX, of Hawthorne, California, is developing the Starship — a fully integrated lander that will use the SpaceX Super Heavy rocket.

The third company is Leidos Holdings Inc LDOS-owned Dynetics of Huntsville, Alabama, which is developing the Dynetics Human Landing System,  a single structure providing ascent and descent capabilities that will launch on the ULA Vulcan launch system.

NASA says it is on track for sustainable human exploration of the moon for the first time in history.

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Photo courtesy of SpaceX.