That modular approach, Couluris argues, has advantages over building a larger integrated lander. Draper Laboratory, in Cambridge, Mass., is providing the avionics for the combined lander. Northrop Grumman will provide a transfer stage, which will move the combined ascent and descent stages from a high lunar orbit to a low one, from which the descent stage takes over for the landing. Its crew cabin is based on the one the company designed for the Orion spacecraft. Lockheed Martin is building the ascent stage, which will carry astronauts back into lunar orbit. Blue Origin is leading the development of the descent stage, which brings the lander down to the surface, using a version of an uncrewed lunar lander called Blue Moon that it had previously been working on. Its design is the most similar of the three to the original Apollo LM. “What we're trying to do is take the best of what all the partners bring to build a truly integrated lander vehicle,' says John Couluris, program manager for the HLS at Blue Origin. Blue Origin, in Kent, Wash., has the significant financial resources of its founder, 's Jeff Bezos, but chose to partner with three other major companies on its lander: Draper, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. The three landers are as different as the companies NASA selected. Loverro, who was the NASA associate administrator responsible for human spaceflight, added, “We've got all the pieces we need.' Later this year, NASA will choose which of these three to pursue. “Let's make no mistake about it: We are now on our way,' said Douglas Loverro, then a NASA official, at the briefing announcing the contracts. On 30 April 2020, NASA announced the winners of three contracts with a combined US $967 million for those initial studies: Blue Origin, Dynetics, and SpaceX. Proposals for the HLS program were due to NASA in November of 2019. Based on the quality of those lander designs as well as the available funding-including the share of the costs companies offered to pay-NASA would select one or more for continued development. NASA would award up to four contracts for less than a year of initial work to refine lander designs. That was the approach NASA decided to follow to develop what it calls the Human Landing System (HLS), part of its upcoming Artemis program of lunar exploration. “We want to have numerous suppliers that are competing against each other on cost, and on innovation, and on safety,' NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told the Senate Commerce Committee in September of 2020. That approach, NASA argued, would allow it to support more companies in the early phases of the program and perhaps through full-scale lander development. Commercial programs to ferry cargo and crew to the space station demonstrated there were opportunities for government to partner with industry, with companies covering some of the development costs in exchange for using the vehicles they designed to serve other customers. But in the half century since Apollo, not only has the technology of spaceflight changed, but so has the business. The Lunar Module, or LM, used for the Apollo program, was developed through a standard government contract with Grumman Corp. To meet Pence's 2024 deadline, it was clear that NASA would have to move faster than normal. Three's the Charm: While they'll never all be built-much less be parked side by side on the lunar surface-this artist's rendering shows the dramatic differences in the three proposed designs. Those studies have since progressed, and NASA may settle on a design for its upcoming moon lander as soon as next month. Indeed, proposals for an initial round of studies were due to NASA just the day before he spoke. NASA was just starting to consider new ideas for lunar landers when Pence gave his speech. What's missing, though, is the lander that astronauts will use to go from the Orion in lunar orbit down to the surface and back. The Orion, a crewed spacecraft that will be launched on that rocket, is even older, dating back to the previous NASA initiative to send humans to the moon, the Constellation program in the mid-2000s. The rocket that is the centerpiece of NASA's lunar exploration plans, the Space Launch System, has been in development for nearly a decade and is scheduled to make its first flight in late 2021. That decision wasn't as radical as it might have seemed. Instead, he announced that the new goal was to land humans on the moon by 2024. Speaking at a meeting of the National Space Council, Pence noted that NASA's plans for returning humans to the moon called for a landing in 2028. In March 2019, Vice President Mike Pence instructed NASA to do something rarely seen in space projects: move up a schedule.

Lunar lander