NASA on Thursday selected nine companies to compete for $2.6 billion in potential lunar commercial delivery services over the next 10 years, a key step toward long-term study and human exploration of the moon and eventually Mars.
The U.S. companies are Astrobotic Technology, Inc., Deep Space Systems, Draper Laboratory, Firefly Aerospace, Inc., Intuitive Machines, LLC, Lockheed Martin [LMT], Masten Space Systems, Inc., Moon Express, and Orbit Beyond.
Under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contracts, the nine companies will “bid on delivering science and technology payloads” that will launch from Earth and land on the moon. NASA said it will be just one of the customers using the services.
“Today’s announcement marks tangible progress in America’s return to the moon’s surface to stay,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said. “The innovation of America’s aerospace companies, wedded with our big goals in science and human exploration, are going to help us achieve amazing things on the moon and feed forward to Mars.”
Payloads could fly on CLPS contracts beginning in 2019 with technology demonstrations.
NASA also said it will occasionally review private sector capabilities for new opportunities to add more companies to the CLPS contract.
Lockheed Martin said its design for the lunar delivery missions, the McCandless Lunar Lander, is based on the design of its InSight Lander, which landed on Mars on Monday, and the Phoenix Lander, which arrived at Mars in 2008.
Draper said its Artems-7 will fly multiple times before conducting CLPS missions. Draper said its team includes General Atomics and Spaceflight Industries.