JAKARTA - NASA has chosen US rocket maker Firefly Aerospace to place the lander on the far side of the month by 2026 with a contract worth nearly 112 million US dollars (Rp1.7 trillion) recently.
"Commercial lenders will deliver two agency payloads, as well as communication relay satellites and data for lunar orbit, which is an ESA (European Space Agency) collaboration with NASA," the US space agency said.
Firefly is GO for a mission to the Dark Side of the Moon! We’ve been awarded a 2nd NASA contract, delivering payloads to lunar orbit and on the far side of the Moon, building the infrastructure for ongoing lunar opportunities and planetary exploration. https://t.co/B8p00l1tRl pic.twitter.com/PnsbpOqfrL
— Firefly Aerospace (@Firefly_Space) March 14, 2023
The contract is part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative of the Artemis program - an attempt to deploy lunar landers built privately to study the lunar surface before humans land there in the next few years.
NASA awarded a similar US$73 million (Rp1.1 trillion) to spacecraft software company Draper last year to deliver science and technology payloads to the far side of the moon by 2025.
Firefly, which reached orbit for the first time in October last year, has faced years of difficulties, including a rescue from bankruptcy in 2017 by Ukrainian-born businessman Max Polyakov's Noosphere Ventures.
NASA awarded 93.3 million US dollars (Rp1.4 trillion) to Firefly based in Cedar Park, Texas in 2021 to bring ten science investigations and demonstrations of technology to the moon by 2023.
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