After two preliminary rounds, NASA today published its final call for industry proposals to have the first two landers capable of putting astronauts on the moon ready for 2024 and 2025.
NASA’s broad agency announcement, known as NextSTEP-2 Appendix H, makes clear that two different companies would be chosen to build human-capable landers. One of them would be used for the Artemis 3 mission, which aims to send two astronauts to and from the lunar surface in 2024. The other would be used for a demonstration mission in 2025.
Those two missions would set the stage for putting an upgraded lander on the moon in 2026 to demonstrate a “sustainable” approach to lunar exploration. That follow-up demonstration mission would serve as a “precursor to procuring lunar landing services as commercial services beginning in 2028,” NASA said.
And here’s the kicker: The proposals for the first two landers are due in a month.
