Three companies are going to be the first private business to ever land on moon. (Image via: Futurism)

3 Companies to Land on Moon: NASA

Civilization on the Moon is getting at hand. In November 2018, 3 companies out of 9 contenders won the contracts to land their rovers on the lunar surface, as the strategy for NASA to land astronauts on Moon by 2024.

These companies are Astrobotics, Intuitive Machines, and OrbitBeyond. This was the result from Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) program held by NASA, where the government instance and private instances join altogether to reach the Moon.

These 3 companies are going to facilitate the delivery of scientific instruments from Earth to Moon. Steve Clarke, the associate deputy administrator for exploration at NASA, stated that CLPS encourage NASA to send its first woman and the next man to Moon in 4 years. This project is called Project Artemis, a nod to Artemis, Greek Lunar Goddess.

The 3 companies are going to share $250 million, in order to facilitate the maximum delivery of 23 payloads from Earth to Moon. Should the landing succeed, these 3 companies will be the first private institutions to ever land on Moon.

Despite being green in the industry, OrbitBeyond, a company based in New Jersey, was the first to declare that they would be the first to reach Moon by 2020 with its Z-01 lander, designed by team of Indian geniuses.

Astrobotics from Pittsburgh was the second to follow. They stated that they are currently developing Peregrine lander in order to finalize their landing on the lunar surface by 2021. Previously, about 8 nations are depending on their service to deliver their 14 payloads of scientific instruments to Moon; now, there are 28 payloads, adding others from NASA. 

In addition, both Astrobotics and OrbitBeyond are headed by Indian CEOs.

Intuitive Machines from Houston, the best contender for the contract, will use their Nova-C lander to deliver NASA payloads to the Moon. Nova-C is known to be the biggest container for the payloads.

Intuitive Machines and OrbitBeyond stated that they would use RocketX’s Falcon 9 to launch their landers on the lunar surface.

Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/06/04/nasa-picks-three-companies-to-send-commercial-landers-to-the-moon/