Looks brilliant there, Starship.
Elon Musk / SpaceX
The next people to visit the surface of the moon will take a walk thanks not only to NASA, but also to Elon Musk and SpaceX.
The space agency announced Friday that it has chosen the builder of high-quality rockets and satellites to provide the human landing system for its Artemis program, which aims to send the first astronauts to the moon at the end of the Apollo program, including the first woman to step on lunar surface later in this decade.
SpaceX already has a vehicle in mind and under development for the workplace. Starship is the next generation spacecraft that has already made several dramatic test flights from the Texas Gulf Coast development company. So far, each high-altitude flight has been followed by an explosive landing phase, but Musk is not discouraged.
Starship is designed to transport astronauts to the moon and many more people to other worlds such as Mars, where Musk hopes that humanity will expand to become a “multiplanetary species.”
SpaceX won NASA’s massive contract by bidding $ 2.9 billion for the position, surpassing Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Alabama’s military and space contractor Dynetics.
Look at this:
The exploding SpaceX ship: why this massive rocket …
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According to a NASA statement, Artemis astronauts will not ride the Starship to the lunar surface, at least not to start. Instead, a quartet of astronauts will be launched aboard the NASA Launch Space System rocket and the Orion spacecraft on a multi-day trip into lunar orbit. NASA plans to build a small space station called Lunar Gateway in orbit around the moon, which will serve as a staging outpost for lunar travel.
In lunar orbit, the astronauts will transfer to a spacecraft waiting for the surface trip, a period of exploration followed by a return to lunar orbit and then back home to Orion.
At a news conference following the announcement, NASA’s head of the human landing system, Lisa Watkins-Morgan, also revealed that SpaceX will have to conduct an unmanned test landing on the moon before taking astronauts there. This is in line with the approach taken with the Crew Dragon company that took astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time last year.
NASA hopes to award prizes to two companies to make the process competitive, but the agency received funding for one, making SpaceX’s low bid attractive.
SpaceX is also further in the development process than any other company and has long intended to send Starship to the Moon and Mars, with or without NASA support.
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