NASA is following up its Apollo mission to the Moon with its new mission Artemis in 2024, and has selected three commercial Moon landing service providers that will deliver science and technology payloads under Commercial Lunar Payload Services as part of the Artemis program.
The three consortia that will design and build landers for the mission are Orbit Beyond of Edison, New Jersey, Intuitive Machines of Houston, and Astrobotic of Pittsburg. Each commercial lander will carry NASA-provided payloads that will conduct science investigations and demonstrate advanced technologies on the lunar surface, paving the way for NASA astronauts to land on the lunar surface by 2024.
Orbit Beyond, which received a $97 million contract, has proposed to fly as many as four payloads to Mare Imbrium, a lava plain in one of the Moon’s craters, by September 2020, and the company has retained India’s startup Team Indus for equipment design and construction services. Team Indus engineer Ananth Ramesh confirmed the news, “Yes, we will be building the lander. It is most likely to be built in India too.”
Founded in 2010 by Rahul Narayana, Bangalore-based private aerospace firm Team Indus was a finalist for the $30 million Google Lunar XPrize contest.
