Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin won a contract on May 19 at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to develop a spacecraft that will take people to the moon. Two years ago, a similar contract the company lost to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, writes The Washington Post.
The contract worth $ 3.4 billion is designed for the third landing of a man on the moon planned by NASA under the Artemis program. Landing with the spacecraft Blue Origin – a four-legged descent vehicle Blue Moon height of 52 feet (15.8 m) – will occur in 2029, after the preceding two landings with the crew of SpaceX.
As part of the Artemis program, NASA intends to provide regular flights of astronauts to the moon. But instead of sending them to the equatorial region of the moon, as was done in the Apollo era of the 1960s and 1970s, the agency is targeting the satellite’s South Pole, where shaded craters contain water in the form of ice.
In a May 19 statement, NASA chief Bill Nelson said the space agency has “big goals for the Artemis program: to carry out about one mission to the surface of the moon per year for astronauts to stay up to 30 days.”
In January, NASA chief Nelson, speaking about the moon race, in which China has actively joined, noted that it is necessary to be on guard. He is confident that the United States will win it, if it does not lose a minute in the next two years, which will be decisive.
On April 10, Nathan Eismont, a leading researcher at the Institute for Space Research (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that Russian cosmonauts will be able to fly to the moon in the next 7-10 years.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on April 12 that there is a need for an early resumption of the domestic lunar program and missions to other planets. He added that the Russian orbital station, the project of which is being developed by specialists, will become the country’s outpost in space.