SpaceX has got a $2.9 billion contract from National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for building the spacecraft to help astronauts, reach the moon as early as 2024. NASA was negotiating with Blue Origin which is owned by Jeff Bezos and defense contractor Dynetics Incorporation, but NASA has preferred SpaceX over Dynetics. SpaceX and NASA have already launched four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), which is the third crewed mission of a US private rocket company in less than a year. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the world’s first and third richest billionaire respectively were chasing human’s return to the moon since 1972 and finally, SpaceX grabbed the opportunity with a deal of $2.9 billion by NASA, an American space agency.
According to NASA’s tweet on its official Twitter handle, the Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying four astronauts from 3 nations have safely reached orbit a few minutes after the launch from NASA’s Kennedy space center based in Florida at 5.40 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. SpaceX has postponed the launch by few hours due to unfavorable weather conditions. It was the first time that a billionaire entrepreneur has planned to reuse the capsule and a rocket to launch astronauts. The aircraft lifted off by SpaceX, due to arrive at the International Space Station following a flight over more than 22 hours. The SpaceX took a team of four members which includes American astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur along with French scientist Thomas Pesquet, and Japan`s Akihiko Hoshide. After the announcement of the final deal, “NASA Rules!!”, Elon Musk wrote on Twitter.
NASA said in its statement that SpaceX has HLS Starship that is designed to land on the moon. It was another important milestone for both SpaceX and NASA for this year, and their international partners European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. It will be an exciting moment to see the crew greeting each other for the first crew handover under NASA’s commercial crew program. As per the plan, SpaceX will handle the spacecraft from the company’s mission control center which is based at Hawthorne in California. On the other side, the NASA team will control the space station operation during the whole flight from Mission Control Center at NASA’s space agency which is based in Houston.
NASA has planned a total of six space missions. The Crew-2 is the second total crewed mission that SpaceX and NASA will complete as the part of commercial crew program. During the six-month stay of Crew-2, they will conduct science and maintenance at the orbiting laboratory, and will come back not earlier than October. NASA was planning to announce the lunar lander content for both Bezos and Musk by the end of this month, but instead, the space agency picked only SpaceX. With this ambitious mission, NASA aims to create the regular service to the moon and said that the space agency will arrange a separate competition for that long-term contract.
