It did receive full funding, albeit at the much lower level of $1.195 billion, for fiscal year 2022. NASA has struggled, though, to secure funding for HLS, receiving only about a fourth of the $3.4 billion it requested in fiscal year 2021. ![]() The White House is expected to release its fiscal year 2023 budget proposal as soon as March 28 that will include financial details for the effort. Nelson declined to go into details about the budget for Sustaining Lunar Development. A final RFP will come out later in the spring, with the goal of making an award early next year. Watson-Morgan said NASA will release a draft request for proposals (RFP) for the new project by the end of March, with an industry day in early April. ![]() The new award will be a fixed-price, milestone-based award like the original HLS award, and will have very similar requirements to Option B. She said there will be “multiple swim lanes” within HLS for SpaceX’s current Option A work, new Option B work and the Sustaining Lunar Development project. Sustaining Lunar Development will be run as part of the overall HLS program, said Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA’s HLS program manager. “But beyond Artemis 3 we want to increase the healthy competition and advance our lunar capabilities to support more science, more exploration and an emerging lunar marketplace.” SpaceX continues to make good progress toward that mission,” said Jim Free, associate administrator for exploration systems development. “We’re still targeting 2025 for that landing. NASA officials said the decision to hold a second competition did not reflect a lack of confidence in SpaceX on its HLS development. However, NASA said it plans to exercise a provision in its HLS award, called Option B, to fund development of changes to SpaceX’s Starship lander to support the new requirements and a second crewed demonstration mission. SpaceX will not be eligible to compete for the Sustaining Lunar Development contract. Agency officials, though, did not provide any specific changes in requirements. One difference about the Sustaining Lunar Development effort is that the landers will have to be designed for greater performance than under the HLS competition, including the ability to transport more astronauts and cargo to the lunar surface and support longer stays. ![]() I promised competition, so here it is,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a call with reporters about the new program. “Today’s announcement is what I said to Congress. The Sustaining Lunar Development award is intended to ensure there are two companies that can compete for later services contracts for Artemis landing missions, providing the competition that many in Congress had lobbied NASA to provide after it made a single Option A award to SpaceX. ![]() The award will include both an uncrewed demonstration landing and a crewed landing, much like SpaceX’s HLS Option A contract. The agency said it will soon kick off a competition for what it calls Sustaining Lunar Development, which will back work on a second lander separate from the existing Human Landing System (HLS) award made to SpaceX in April 2021. WASHINGTON - NASA announced March 23 that it will support development of a second lander to transport astronauts to and from the lunar surface to provide competition with SpaceX for the later “sustainable” phase of the Artemis program.
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