Boeing and Lockheed to perform US moon mission
The first landing of a US spacecraft on the moon for nearly 50 years is to be made possible by „Vulcan“ missiles of the United Launch Alliance (ULA). The joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin struck in the race for the contract, the SpaceX space company of Tesla boss Elon Musk, as the news agency Reuters learned Monday from ULA and the client Astrobotic.
Its lunar peregrine „Peregrine“ had been selected by the US space agency NASA in May to complete the first of several unmanned flights to the Moon. The company is said to launch in the summer of 2021.
Bezos‘ Blue Origin builds rocket
The mission and the subsequent ones should also prepare the way for man’s return to the moon. Astrobotic pointed out that no US spacecraft had landed there since 1972 – the flight of Apollo 17.
„Our first flight with ‚Vulcan‘ is also the first big step to returning to the moon,“ said ULA chief Tory Bruno Reuters before announcing the contract. Vulcan’s BE-4 rocket engines are built by Blue Origin, the space company of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The US administration of President Donald Trump wants to bring astronauts to the moon again by 2024.
