NASA Delays Launch of LTV Lunar Explorer Contract for Artemis Mission

NASA has postponed the launch of the contract for the construction of LTV vehicles (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA - The United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was supposed to award the contract for the construction of the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) this month, but they postponed it.

In fact, LTV is one of the vehicles needed by astronauts for the Artemis mission, namely the exploration mission on the Moon. From the report by Spacenews, the award of this contract was delayed by four months, a very long time.

NASA should have issued LTV contracts to selected companies on November 27. However, due to the sudden change in time, this contract will be issued on March 31 next year.

At the end of October, a NASA spokesperson said that they wanted to evaluate proposals for further LTV contracts. Unfortunately, NASA did not explain in more detail the form of their evaluation.

Some industry officials suspect that the timing rollback is related to NASA's uncertain fiscal year 2024 budget. According to them, NASA needs to determine the total money to be spent.

In addition, NASA is estimated to be evaluating the amount of LTV funding they have next year and is thinking about the number of contracts they will issue and their budget.

So far, several companies are still waiting for LTV contracts to be launched to manage vehicles for NASA's large missions. Some of the companies we know about are Astrolabe, Intuitive Machines, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, and Teledyne Brown.

The company selected by NASA will build the LTV lunar rover. NASA will likely choose one or two companies to build the LTV until the vehicle can finally be used at the end of this decade.