# Musk's SpaceX wins NASA award to supply planned lunar space station.
NASA on Friday picked a new space capsule from Elon Musk’s SpaceX to ferry cargo and supplies to the agency’s planned lunar space station, a crucial building block to its plans to build a permanent post on the moon and mount future missions to Mars.
SpaceX will get a portion of a $7 billion NASA contract to use its biggest rocket, Falcon Heavy, to send a new “Dragon XL” spacecraft to the Lunar Gateway, an outpost NASA plans to build that will orbit the moon sometime within the next decade.
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Source - www.reuters.com |
The Dragon XL spacecraft, the latest variant in Musk’s lineup of so-called Dragon cargo and astronaut capsules, will carry research supplies that will help future astronauts on the surface of the moon collect lunar samples, a NASA announcement said.
The Dragon variant, which would be docked at the orbital station for six to 12 months per mission, is “optimized to carry more than 5 metric tons of cargo to Gateway in lunar orbit,” SpaceX said in a tweet.
The financial value of the award was not given. But it signals a key development in the U.S. space agency’s Artemis program to return to the moon - unveiled by Vice President Mike Pence a year ago this week — and deals a win for Musk’s space company as it works to launch its debut manned mission to space this summer.
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