NASA is counting on a lot of unproven rockets for its Artemis plan

Enlarge / It's still not clear how NASA will get its lunar lander to the Moon. (credit: NASA)

On Thursday, NASA announced awards to begin final design and initial development of landers to carry humans down to the Moon—a big step for the Artemis Program.

Building these landers to reach the lunar surface by 2024 is a big challenge, as it leaves a little more than four years to design, build, test, and fly these complex vehicles. After all, it took Grumman more than six years to build the Lunar Module in the 1960s, and the company had done some preparatory work before NASA issued its first contracts.

But assuming at least one of the three lander concepts is ready to go by 2024—Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander, Dynetics' landing system, or SpaceX's Starship—there remains the question of how to get it to the Moon. NASA has not settled upon a final architecture for the Artemis III mission to land on the Moon in 2024, and a choice of four rockets remains.

Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments