An artistic rendering of what a future Artemis lunar lander could look like | Image: NASA
NASA is now officially accepting proposals for lunar lander designs that can carry humans to the surface of the Moon. The space agency issued a final call to the commercial space industry today, with proposals due November 1st.
Human lunar landers are a critical component of NASA’s Artemis program, an initiative to send people back to the Moon’s surface in less than five years. These landers are meant to live at a new space station that NASA wants to build in orbit around the Moon called the Gateway. Astronauts will supposedly travel to the Gateway in NASA’s future rocket — the Space Launch System, or SLS — and from there, they’ll travel in the landers down to the Moon.
Specifically, NASA is looking for landers that consist of two to…