Relaunching a lunar lander programby Jeff Foust Monday, August 2, 2021
NASA con move ahead with the contract it awarded to SpaceX to develop a lunar lander based on its Starship vehicle after the GAO rejected protests from the two losing bidders July 30. (credit: SpaceX)No doubt there were some sighs of relief among NASA leadership on Friday afternoon, and they had nothing to do with the situation on the International Space Station.
NASA leadership, including administrator Bill Nelson, had traveled to the Kennedy Space Center in hopes of observing the launch of an Atlas V carrying Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner on a second uncrewed test flight, a rerun of the December 2019 test flight cut short by problems with the spacecraft. But a day earlier, NASA postponed the launch after the station temporarily lost attitude control when the new Russian Nauka module, which docked to the station Thursday morning, started firing its thrusters hours later. Controllers were able to get the station reoriented after about an hour, but the incident led NASA to delay the launch until this week to give the station time to get back to normal.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4224/1