WASHINGTON — The two companies with NASA contracts to develop crewed lunar landers are also beginning work on cargo versions of their spacecraft.
NASA has exercised options in Human Landing System (HLS) awards made to Blue Origin and SpaceX to begin initial design and development work of versions of their landers that can carry large amounts of cargo to the lunar surface.
NASA made a passing reference to the work in a Jan. 9 announcement about the delays to the Artemis 2 and 3 missions. “NASA also shared that it has asked both Artemis human landing system providers – SpaceX and Blue Origin – to begin applying knowledge gained in developing their systems as part of their existing contracts toward future variations to potentially deliver large cargo on later missions,” the agency said in a press release.
“In the last few months, we’ve asked both of our Human Landing System providers, SpaceX and Blue Origin, to being applying the work they’re doing on the human-rated versions of the landing vehicles to develop a cargo variant that can land large cargo on the surface,” said Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator for the Moon to Mars Program in NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Development, in a Jan. 9 media call. However, NASA provided no other details about that work at the time, with the briefing focused on the delays to the upcoming Artemis missions.
In a Jan. 19 statement to SpaceNews, NASA spokesperson Kathryn Hambleton said that the work is being done under options to Blue Origin’s HLS contract, awarded in May 2023, and the “Option B” award to SpaceX in November 2022, which modified the original HLS contract SpaceX won in April 2021. The options, which cover work through a preliminary design review, do not require additional funding beyond the $3.4 billion to Blue Origin and $1.15 billion for SpaceX’s Option B.
“NASA expects these large cargo landers to have high commonality with the human landing…
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