NASA Opens the Door to Commercial Moon Landing, including Two Colorado Companies
From Colorado Public Radio - Colorado Matters: Two Colorado companies are getting into the delivery business. Not the two-day delivery kind, more like the 238,900-mile outer space kind. NASA is to take their experiments to the lunar surface. Two of the nine approved bidders are Lockheed Martin and . is a well-known industry titan, while Deep Space Systems is a Littleton-based company with just 65 employees.
The "Commercial Lunar Payload Services" contracts are part of President Donald Trump's . The increased traffic to the moon will also practice technology and techniques needed to bring large vehicles and astronauts to Mars.
"Mars is very, very hard to get to," said Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØBoulder Professor Jack Burns, who also served on President Trump's transition team for NASA. "The Moon, on the other hand, is nearby. It's only three days away, and the technologies are in hand to begin developing it and to learn how to live and work on an alien, hostile body."