WASHINGTON – NASA is delaying a decision on which companies will continue to develop human lunar landers for the Artemis program as it grapples with a funding gap and a change in administrations.
In a January 27 notice to the three teams participating in the Human Landing System (HLS) program, NASA announced that it will be executing two-month free renewals on their contracts, which would expire February 28. extension was first reported by The Verge.
Thanks to the free extensions, the contracts awarded to Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX last April will run through April 30, but the companies will not receive additional funding. The expansion will give NASA more time to determine which companies, if any, receive “Option A” awards for lander development.
“The timing of this extension is intended to enable NASA to complete the Option A evaluation, selection and award process and to maintain the ability to seamlessly transition from Base Period contracts to Option A contracts. the agency said in a statement on the HLS website.
An industry source said in the background that the expansion was expected due to uncertainty about how NASA will proceed with the HLS program. Although NASA said it could hand out Option A awards before April 30, that source said it wouldn’t be surprising to see additional delays in the program.
The main reason behind that uncertainty is that the amount of funding available for HLS is much lower than what the agency requested. NASA’s budget request for fiscal year 2021 asked for $ 3.3 billion for the program, but the final omnibus loan bill passed in December raised $ 850 million.
NASA has said little about the status of the program since then, in part due to the ongoing evaluation of Option A proposals submitted by the HLS companies. “Our team has left and we will be making a decision on which systems to invest in their lunar landing demonstrations,” said Kathy Lueders, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, at a Jan. 14 meeting of two NASA advisory boards. commissions. She added that NASA was still “shooting for the 2024 timeframe” for that first landing.
But in an interview on Jan. 16 during his final days in office, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine acknowledged that limited funding will force NASA to change its strategy. The agency had hoped to fund the development of two landing systems in an approach similar to the commercial cargo and crew programs, providing competition between the companies and back-up should a company stumble.
“The appropriation we asked for was $ 3.3 billion for the Human Landing System. We didn’t understand that, ”he said, noting that NASA was still getting“ a lot ”of funding for the program with bipartisan support.
“NASA needs to go back and see what the options are for getting to the moon as soon as possible,” he said.
But “ as soon as possible ” may not be the 2024 goal set by the Trump administration nearly two years ago. The Biden administration has not yet commented on its plans for NASA, although the Democratic Party platform did include language endorsing a human return to the moon. However, that document did not explicitly endorse this by 2024 or any other specific date.