SpaceX Wins NASA Project Tender To Send Astronauts To The Moon By 2024

Illustration of NASA and SpaceX (doc. NASA)

JAKARTA - Elon Musk's company, SpaceX, has won a bid worth 2.9 US dollars or the equivalent of Rp43 trillion to develop a spacecraft to the Moon. The joint project with NASA will be implemented in early 2024.

Launching Reuters, Monday, April 19, SpaceX and NASA will develop a satellite landing vehicle on the Moon. It's been an ambitious NASA project to return to the Moon, since the last Apollo mission in 1972.

"The Artemis lunar landings are an important part of our Moon-to-Mars strategy. Today is a major step forward. This is an extraordinary time to engage in human exploration for all of humanity," said NASA administrator Steve Jurczyk.

NASA has selected Starship to land the first astronauts on the lunar surface since the Apollo program! We are humbled to help @NASAArtemis usher in a new era of human space exploration → https://t.co/Qcuop33Ryz pic.twitter.com/GN9Tcfqlfp

- SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 16, 2021

NASA plans to launch four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft into lunar orbit. There, two astronauts will be transferred to the SpaceX Starship to continue their journey to the moon.

The mission this time is also unique because it will place female astronauts and people of color for the first time on the Moon. As is well known, no one has set foot on the Moon for 50 years.

In the cooperation contract, SpaceX managed to beat the defense contractor Dynetics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and also Blue Origin made by Jeff Bezos. Later astronauts will ride the Starship rocket belonging to SpaceX.

The Starship rocket itself is still under development. Even so, this rocket is predicted to be used as future transportation to the Moon, Mars and other destinations in space.

"We are humbled to help @NASAArtemis usher in a new era of human space exploration," said SpaceX via Twitter.