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      NASA has just announced that it has awarded contracts to three companies to carry payloads of scientific instruments to the Moon in 2020 and 2021. No private company has ever successfully landed a probe on the Moon. The last time the U.S. space program landed anything on the Moon was forty-six years ago.  With these new contracts, NASA is moving forward on its promise to use commercial space companies to assist in the U.S. exploration of the Moon.
      This new program was formerly called Commercial Payload Services. It represents the start of a decade-long project for NASA to return to the Moon. One of the goals of this new program is to establish a permanent manned base on the surface of the Moon. Another goal is to analyze potential of the lunar surface with respect to possible human activities. A third goal is to assess the possibility of utilizing resources present on or near the lunar surface.
        Thomas Zurbuchen is the head of NASA’s science programs. He said,  “The most important goal we have right now is really science, but we do so as part of the agency’s strategy to go to the Moon. We want to do it with partners. We want to not only go there, but to grow an industry. That’s the only way we can stay.”
       Orbit Beyond (OB) is a private space company that is located in New Jersey. OB has signed a ninety-seven million dollar contract to send its Z-01 lander to a lava plain that is about thirty degrees north of the lunar equator in September of 2020. The OB space craft will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket along with other satellites. Jon Morse is the chief science officer for OB. He said, “People want to understand how close you can put a habitat to a landing site. When we do this descent, and we get this imagery, scientists can study the trajectory of those plumes.”
      Astrobotics (AB) is a private space company located in Pennsylvania. They signed an eighty million dollar contract to deliver up to fourteen payloads to a big crater on the near side of the Moon named Lacus Mortis. The AB payloads will be launched by either Falcon 9 or Atlas V rockets in 2021.
       Intuitive Machines is a private space company located in Texas. IM was awarded seventy seven million dollars to ferry up to five payloads to an interesting lunar location called Oceanus Procellarum. This mission will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket sometime in 2021.
        The big challenge for these contracts is whether or not private space companies can successfully land payloads on the Moon. Representatives of each of the three companies contracted by NASA said that they were working hard to balance system redundancy in their payloads with constraints based on mass and cost of payloads.
       NASA had previously said that these missions were “shots on goal” implying that some of them might not be successful. However, the NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration said last Friday that his “confidence is high that these three companies will succeed.”