NASA announced on Saturday that SpaceX (owned by Elon Musk), Blue Origin (owned by Jeff Bezos), and six other aerospace companies have qualified to bid for lunar transportation contracts totaling up to $10 billion. This move further expands NASA's commercial lunar program as it moves forward with its plans to establish a permanent base on the moon. The announcement was made during the MAX POWER Aerospace Exhibition and Flight Demonstration at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA will leverage the resources of these private companies to deliver scientific equipment, technology facilities, and infrastructure to the lunar south pole, preparing for a future lunar base.
Under the newly established Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) framework, the maximum total value of contracts over the next 10 years is $10 billion. It is important to note that this amount is the upper limit on the total value of future mission orders, not the contract funds already awarded by NASA to participating companies.
In addition to SpaceX and Blue Origin, other companies that qualified to bid include Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, iSpace US, Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems, and Voyager Technologies.
