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NASA three companies that will help bring humans to the moon as part of the Artemis programme. US firms Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX will receive a combined $967 million to develop and test lunar landers.

“The United States has not had a human landing system since 1972,” said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine at a press conference on 30 April. “This is the last piece that we need in order to get to the moon.”

Each company will develop its own lunar lander. Blue Origin’s Integrated Lander Vehicle will be designed to launch aboard either the company’s own New Glenn rocket or the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket.

The Dynetics Human Landing System is also intended to be carried by the Vulcan rocket. SpaceX’s contract will go towards developing its Starship spacecraft, designed to launch aboard the company’s Super Heavy rocket.

“One thing that we were striving for… is to see what US industry could bring us with respect to innovation, and boy did they deliver,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan at NASA.

The three projects are very different. Blue Origin’s lander, which is based on its earlier Blue Moon concept, has three sections – a transfer stage to move it into a lower orbit around the moon from where it is first dropped, a descent stage to land and an ascent stage to return into lunar orbit. The landers from Dynetics and SpaceX are both intended to be single structures that can perform all three of those manoeuvres.

For the first mission of the Artemis programme, which aims to send astronauts to the moon by 2024, the plan is to launch one of the landers on a separate rocket to the NASA astronauts, who are set to travel aboard the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that the agency is developing. Then, the astronauts will rendezvous with their lander in orbit around the moon before lowering down to its surface. The other two landers may be used on subsequent missions.

While the specifics are yet undecided, these crafts will be tested without astronauts before the first crewed launch to the moon. “We won’t just send them up there and let them enter the spacecraft for the first time without tests,” said Watson-Morgan.

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