NASA taps Alabama’s Dynetics to study ‘routine’ lunar landers

NASA's Moon vision

NASA is planning to return to the Moon for the long term, as this illustration shows. The space agency has picked companies to design landers that can do that kind of regular mission.

Dynetics, a technology company based in Huntsville, Ala., lost its bid to build America’s first new “demonstration” Moon lander, but won a NASA contract today to help the space agency instead make regular trips to the lunar surface after the demonstration’s done.

The $40.8 million contract awarded today to Dynetics, a Leidos Company, shows NASA is committed to “a long-term human presence on the Moon through recurring services using lunar landers,” said Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Also winning long-term lander development contracts were Blue Origin Federation ($25.6M), Lockheed Martin ($35.2M), Northrop Grumman ($34.8M) and SpaceX ($9.4M).

SpaceX won a sole-source contract worth $2.9 billion in April to build the first lander for the first crewed flight to the surface of the Moon. That led to a formal protest from Blue Origin rejected by NASA followed by a Blue Origin lawsuit.

NASA said Dynetics and the other companies selected today will develop “lander design concepts, evaluating their performance, design, construction standards, mission assurance requirements, interfaces, safety, crew health accommodations, and medical capabilities. The companies will also mitigate lunar lander risks by conducting critical component tests and advancing the maturity of key technologies.”

“Collaboration with our partners is critical to achieving NASA’s long-term Artemis lunar exploration goals,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan, Human Landing System Program manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. “By partnering with innovative U.S. companies, we will establish a robust lunar economy while exploring new areas of the Moon for generations to come.”

“Those are two procurements that NASA has running parallel to each other,” NASA spokeswoman Jena Rowe said at Marshall today. “If you thought about it like business, you have two business opportunities out there at the same time. They’re not related to each other.”

The contracts awarded today are for “risk-reduction studies and things like that specifically looking at how to meet NASA’s needs for a routine cadence of human transportation services to and from the Moon, which will come in the late 2020s,” Rowe said.

“This is for the future,” Rowe said.

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