Elon Musk, the boss of SpaceX, believes that his company can send astronauts to the Moon again before 2024. It is known that SpaceX has received the Artemis contract for the Landing System (HLS).
From the beginning, this program has been colored by debate. Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin has also filed a lawsuit.
As part of the NextSTEP - 2 Appendix H program, NASA previously selected SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics to develop the HLS that will bring the Artemis III astronauts back to the lunar surface after a long time. Initially, NASA wanted to award contracts to two companies (Blue Origin and Dynetics but ultimately chose SpaceX due to budget and schedule constraints.
In response, Blue Origin and Dynetics lodged a complaint with the Government Accountability Office (GAO). On July 30, GAO denied these protests and on the same day, according to CNBC reporter Michael Sheetz, NASA made the first payment of the HLS contract to SpaceX.
Based on documents uploaded to USASpending.gov, Sheetz reports that NASA provided USD 300 million of the required amount of USD 439.6 million (total contracts worth more than USD 3 billion).
In response, Twitter user Everything Artemis (@artemis360_moon), the unofficial account that tracks news related to the Artemis Program, confirmed this to Elon Musk.
"NASA has started paying for the moon lander @SpaceX. Hopefully (and I believe) the SpaceX team will get to work quickly. @elonmusk do you expect Lunar Starship to be ready to land humans in 2024 (despite other delays)?" write the tweet
"Probably sooner," Elon Musk later responded.
The SpaceX HLS concept is a modified version of the Starship, which is currently undergoing rapid development (along with the Super Heavy booster) at SpaceX's launch facility near Boca Chica. It is said the HLS Starship will have a higher payload capacity as it does not require heat shields, covers and bulky gas boost packages.
Additionally, there have been reports of problems with the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Units (xEMU) spacesuits, leading to concerns that they will not be ready in time. But Elon Musk says SpaceX stands ready to help address that problem as well. This was quoted from Science Alert, Tuesday (24/8/2021).
