Five new companies to bring equipment to the Moon

For NASA to send its experiences to the moon in the next decade, the agency relies on a public-private partnership

 the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). Five new companies have been accepted in the agreements, including SpaceX and Blue Origin.

 The Moon and the Moon again. Defined as the main goal of the coming years for NASA, NASA is preparing not only to send its astronauts, with the program Artemis, but also to land there equipment: measuring instruments and experiences to better understand the field, small robots to explore the surroundings and "heavy" equipment, eventually allowing astronauts to be on the surface for stays longer than the few days of the Apollo missions - which are celebrating their 50th anniversary.

By November 2018, NASA had already selected nine companies to move, if necessary, all-inclusive contracts to the moon. In May 2019 the space agency signed collaborations with three of them to take his experiments on the satellite (one of the three, OrbitBeyond however ended up giving up the contract for not being able to honor it). For this second round, NASA sought to surround itself with partners allowing it to deploy even more the range of possible options for its lunar payloads, some of which could weigh several tons. The selected ones are SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, Ceres Robotics and Tyvak Nanosatellites Systems.

 Send heavy

The selection of the two emblematic companies of "New Space", SpaceX and Blue Origin, testifies a priori that NASA wants to transport very heavy payloads to the lunar surface. Indeed the LG Blue Moon (also proposed in consortium for the inhabited lunar program Artemis) is likely to bring several robots, to spend two weeks of night on site, and to support a large cargo capacity, even if company refuses to share precise figures.

The opposite of SpaceX

 whose operational director Gwynne Shotwell last night commented the decision of NASA. Delighted by this selection, she announced that the Starship spacecraft could deliver up to 100 tons of payloads to the moon by 2022, adding that it would be a "nice step" before sending people there.

 Very big, and very small

Taking the opposite of SpaceX, officials Sierra Nevada, Ceres Robotics and Tyvak Nanosatellites Systems all recalled the strengths of their companies to send small loads to the lunar surface.

Beyond these announcements

 we can notice that NASA has offered, with the CLPS, a wonderful tool to avoid repetitive tenders, grouping lunar shipments under a single chapter: the agency can select at will one of the 14 options available to send cargo on the Moon (provided you pay attention to its budget). Note in passing that the last soft landing of NASA on the Moon dates from 1972 (with Apollo 17).