Washington: NASA has announced plans to build a second manned lunar lander. The human lunar lander is like a space shuttle in which man can sit and land on the moon.
This will be NASA's second major space flight to send man back to the moon. To build the shuttle, the agency is asking commercial space companies to come up with ideas for shuttles that could take people to orbit the moon and to the surface of the moon.
NASA aims to have a manned lunar lander as early as 2026 or 2027. NASA has already entered into an agreement with commercial partner SpaceX to develop a lunar lander aimed at sending the first woman and a man to the moon.
In 2021, NASA awarded a X 2.9 billion contract to SpaceX to build the future Starship Shuttle into a lander that could take humans to the moon.
NASA originally wanted to select two companies to develop manned lunar landers in order to encourage constructive competition between the companies and keep costs down. However, the agency eventually chose the one that is SpaceX. In 2021, NASA asked Congress for 3. 3.4 billion in aid to build space vehicles, but received only 8 850 million, which was 25 percent of the requested price. As a result, NASA and SpaceX signed an agreement for lower costs.