Free Republic

NASA says it will spend more than $250 million hiring private companies to transport scientific missions to the moon. These privately operated missions, part of the US space agency’s broader rush back to the moon, are designed to gather data about the lunar surface and pilot technologies for landing robotic explorers. Three companies—Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and Orbit Beyond—have been awarded contracts for missions into 2021. Orbit Beyond has the earliest target date for its mission, in September 2020.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced Thursday that nine U.S. companies will compete to deliver experiments to the lunar surface. The space agency will buy the service and let private industry work out the details on getting there, he said. The goal is to get small science and technology experiments to the surface of the moon as soon as possible. The first flight could be next year; 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the first manned moon landing.

The general idea is that these companies will be able to compete for contracts to deliver NASA science experiments to the surface of the moon by flying lunar landers on rocket launches purchased from other commercial space companies. Those individual contracts would substitute for NASA needing to build those capacities itself. But under this approach, NASA won't be alone in hiring these companies — the agency hopes to spur development that the commercial sector can also utilize. "We want to be first customers, not only customers," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's head of the science mission directorate, said during the event. The...