NASA Opens Call Artemis Lunar Landers For Moon

NASA is now accepting proposals for Moon landers, yes you heard right. The companies who involved in Space Exploration can apply for it, like Elon Musk ‘SpaceX’.

NASA aims to send human by 2024. 

NASA is seeking proposals for human lunar landing systems designed and developed by American companies for the Artemis program, which includes sending the first woman and next man to the surface of the Moon by 2024.

NASA’s Artemis program includes sending a suite of new science instruments and technology demonstrations to study the Moon, landing the first woman and next man on the lunar surface by 2024, and establishing a sustained presence by 2028.

“In order to best accelerate our return to the Moon and prepare for Mars, we collaborated with industry on ideas to streamline the procurement process,” said Marshall Smith, director of the Human Lunar Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The private sector was eager to provide us feedback throughout this process, and we received more than 1,150 comments on the draft solicitations issued over the summer.”

After reviewing the comments, NASA removed requirements that industry perceived as potential barriers to speed while preserving all the agency’s human safety measures.

For example, industry stated that delivery of a high number of formal technical reports would require a company to spend considerable resources and incur undue schedule risk. Taking this into consideration, NASA has designed a less formal insight model that will be used for accessing critical contractor data while minimizing administrative overhead. As a result, NASA reduced the number of required contract deliverables from 116 to 37.

“Reports still are valuable and necessary, but to compromise and ease the bulk of the reporting burden on industry, we are asking for access to the companies’ systems to monitor progress throughout development,” said Nantel Suzuki, the Human Landing System program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “To maximize our chances of successfully returning to the Moon by 2024, we also are making NASA’s engineering workforce available to contractors and asking proposers to submit a collaboration plan.”

“They were absolutely right,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan, the Human Landing System program manager at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “We are operating on a timeline that requires us to be flexible to encourage innovation and alternate approaches. We still welcome the option to refuel the landing system, but we removed it as a requirement.”

Source: NASA