NASA Selects SpaceX Starship For Second Manned Lunar Landing Under Artemis Program
NASA is increasingly relying on the private space company SpaceX Elon Musk in the implementation of the ambitious lunar program Artemis, the other day the American space agency announced that it had chosen the future Starship spaceplane (more precisely its special version modified for flight and landing on the moon).
Under the new contract, the SpaceX Starship lunar lander will take American astronauts to the moon for the first time in 2025 after a 53-year hiatus.
NASA does not rule out that the dates of the first manned mission to the moon 一 Artemis-3 一 can be postponed to 2026.
The agency also plans to develop a permanent space station in orbit around the Moon, Gateway, which will dock vehicles arriving to the Moon, and inside which crews of astronauts will live.
“The goal of this new Option B work is to develop and demonstrate a Starship lunar lander that meets NASA’s requirements for sustainable missions beyond Artemis III, including docking with the Gateway, accommodating four crew members, and delivering more mass to the surface,” NASA said .
