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NASA Will Soon Choose One of These 3 Landers to Go Back to the Moon:

America's going back to the moon. It's been over 50 years since the Apollo missions, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon in 1969. Both NASA and the current administration have decided it's high time people walked on the moon again—this time, importantly, those people won't just be men.

[...] In April 2020, the agency awarded a total of $967 million in contracts to three different private companies, giving them less than a year to come up with a lander design. Now the time has almost come to pick one of those three. Here are the contenders.

Blue Origin [...] The vertical crew cabin would require astronauts to descend to the moon's surface on a long ladder, which could be seen as an advantage because the crew is safer being high up.

Dynetics [...] Dynetics' is a single module with thrusters and propellant tanks on either side. It's specifically designed to be reusable for repeated exploration of the moon, and it's the only one of the three contenders with a horizontal crew cabin. [...]

SpaceX [...] the biggest and flashiest lunar lander. It's so tall, in fact, that astronauts would use an elevator to get from the crew cabin down to the moon's surface.

[...] NASA's Artemis program will be the core of its spaceflight and exploration endeavors for the next decade, covering low-Earth orbit, the moon, and Mars. In Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo, for whom the first moon missions were named; NASA chose the name Artemis as a gesture of inclusion, intending to land the first woman on the moon.

Incoming President Joe Biden has a lot on his plate[.] [...] The space program may end up being low on his priority list, especially in the near term. But the wheels have already been set in motion for another American journey to the moon—and we'll soon have a way to land on it.

Previously: NASA Selects SpaceX, Dynetics, and Blue Origin to Develop Manned Lunar Landers

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