Elon Musk's SpaceX wins contract to develop spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon
Source: Washington Post
Space
Elon Musk’s SpaceX wins contract to develop spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon
The company beat out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Dynetics, a defense contractor
By Christian Davenport
April 16, 2021 at 1:37 p.m. EDT
NASA on Friday selected Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build spacecraft that would land astronauts on the moon for the first time since the last Apollo mission, according to a source selection document obtained by The Washington Post.
The contract marks another major victory for the hard-charging company that vaults it to the top tier of the nation’s aerospace companies and solidifies it as one of the space agency’s most trusted partners.
In winning the $2.9 billion contract, SpaceX beat out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which had formed what it called a “national team” by partnering with aerospace giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. SpaceX also won over Dynetics, a defense contractor based in Huntsville, Ala. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
NASA had originally chosen all three companies for the initial phase of the contract, and was expected to choose two of them to build the lunar lander. In other major programs, NASA has chosen multiple providers to foster competition and to ensure it has redundancy in case one can’t deliver.
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Christian Davenport
Christian Davenport covers the defense and space industries for The Washington Post's Financial desk. He joined The Post in 2000 and has served as an editor on the Metro desk and as a reporter covering military affairs. He is the author of "The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos" (PublicAffairs, 2018). Follow https://twitter.com/wapodavenport
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/16/nasa-lunar-lander-contract-spacex/
SpaceX wins NASA contract to build spacecraft to fly astronauts to the moon
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