(The first five, drawn from established NASA moon contractors, will receive 77.5% of the loot). So, there are several little companies receiving not a whole lot of money. And last but not least, Zeno Power Systems of Washington, D.C., will receive $15 million to demonstrate "A Universal Americium-241 Radioisotope Power Supply for Artemis" - nuclear power in space.Varda Space Industries of El Segundo, California, will receive $1.9 million for "Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator Tech Transfer and Commercial Production." (I'm honestly not 100% sure what that is, but it seems to have something to do with heat transfer technology).Psionic of Hampton, Virginia, gets $3.2 million for "Validating No-Light Lunar Landing Technology that Reduces Risk, SWaP (Size, Weight, and Power), and Cost," in preparation for future landings on the moon's far side.Pittsburgh's Protoinnovations gets $6.2 million to demo "The Mobility Coordinator: An Onboard COTS (Commercial-Off-the-Shelf) Software Architecture for Sustainable, Safe, Efficient, and Effective Lunar Surface Mobility Operations" (i.e., navigation software). Freedom Photonics of Santa Barbara, California, will receive $1.6 million to demonstrate "Highly Efficient Watt-Class Direct Diode Lidar for Remote Sensing" - a navigation technology.Big Metal Additive of Denver is one, receiving $5.4 million for "Improving Cost and Availability of Space Habitat Structures with Additive Manufacturing.".And tiny, still private, Astrobotic Technology, receiving an outsized $34.6 million award for "LunaGrid-Lite: Demonstration of Tethered, Scalable Lunar Power Transmission."Īnd round up some unusual suspects as wellĪdditionally, we're seeing some new names appear on NASA's contractors list - names that long-term focused investors might want to watch as potential IPO prospects.Smaller Redwire (NYSE: RDW), which gets $12.9 million to develop "Infrastructure Manufacturing with Lunar Regolith.".Boeing's and Lockheed Martin's joint venture United Launch Alliance, with $25 million to fund the "ULA Vulcan Engine Reuse Scale Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator Technology Demonstration" - an inflatable device to slow a spacecraft upon atmospheric reentry.Giant defense contractor Lockheed Martin receiving $9.1 million for "Joining Demonstrations In-Space" (i.e., space construction).Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, which will receive $34.7 million to develop "In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU)-Based Power on the Moon" - using the moon's own resources to power the moon base.Some of these names you'll be familiar with already - others, probably not so much. Last month, NASA named several more space companies that can expect to receive work from the space agency as it divvies out $150 million in government dollars to 11 separate recipients. And these multiple missions will enlist multiple government contractors to provide the technology needed to support, supply, and provide power to such a moon base. Beyond the initial landing of astronauts on Artemis 3, multiple more missions will aim to deliver supplies and establish an infrastructure for permanent settlement on the moon. Unlike the Apollo program of the 1960s and '70s, however, when mankind reaches the moon this time, we intend to stay.Īs I described last year, NASA has plans to conduct perhaps as many as 20 separate Artemis missions over the next couple of decades. In orbit around the moon, this SLS megarocket will meet up with a SpaceX Starship, tweaked for lunar landings, transfer its crew from one vessel to the other, and land humans on the moon for the first time in 50-plus years. Sometime in 2025 (or perhaps 2026), NASA plans to launch its third Space Launch System (built by Boeing (NYSE: BA), Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), 元Harris, Northrop Grumman, and others) on the Artemis 3 moon mission.
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