NASA Bestows A Win-Win For Five

Five space-related companies have received contract awards for a 210-day study to independently evaluate NASA’s in-house design concept for a lunar lander that will be capable of delivering four astronauts to the moon’s surface by the year 2020. Awarded through NASA‘s Constellation Program, the awards total 1.5M/USD, with a maximum individual award of 350K/USD. The recommendations derived from the study will be used to better the technical maturity of the existing design for the development of the actual vehicle requirements. The Constellation Program is building NASA’s nexgen fleet of spacecraft—including the Ares I and Ares V rockets, the Orion crew capsule, and the Altair lunar lander. The spacecraft will send humans beyond low Earth orbit and back to the moon. The selected companies include: Andrews Space of Seattle, The Boeing Company of Houston, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company of Denver, Northrop Grumman Corporation of El Segundo, and Odyssey Space Research of Houston. The Constellation Program is based at Johnson Space Center in Houston and manages the Altair Project for NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington.