NASA selects SpaceX’s starship spacecraft to land on the next moon

NASA Friday He appointed Elon Musk’s SpaceX has a $ 2.9 billion contract to use the Starship spacecraft as a means of landing on its next moon. NASA will help fund SpaceX Development of space media, Initially used in missions to Mars and will help launch astronauts from lunar orbit to the lunar surface starting in 2024.

Starship is still in development: it will be 50 meters high and 9 meters in diameter, capable of carrying goods up to 150 tons. In Tender introduced by NASA As part of the Artemis project, it won the Blue Moon Lander, a Blue Origin company owned by Jeff Bezos, and another American company, Dynamics Proposed Lander. The Starship will deliver two aircraft: the first with unmanned and the second with astronauts.

The Artemis project expects astronauts to reach the moon in the Orion space capsule, which is being launched into our natural satellite by a large rocket under construction, the Space Launch System (SLS). Once in lunar orbit, Orion can connect with the Starship so that astronauts can reach the surface of the Moon. The plan is very ambitious, especially given the very tight deadline between now and 2024, a deadline that seems unreliable to most experts.