The American state space agency NASA has chosen another contractor for the large space program Artemis. This time with Max Polyakov’s Firefly Aerospace, Reuters reports.

  • The contract’s amount is $112 million and it must be completed by 2026.
  • As part of the deal, Firefly Aerospace is required to build a lander for lunar programs. At this stage, the project is being carried out without humans, so the landing module should contain only the equipment necessary for conducting research on the Moon.
  • A similar $73 million contract was signed with the company Draper a year earlier. The program’s goal is also the delivery of a payload to the Moon, but in 2025.
  • These projects are part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, in which NASA uses private companies to deliver scientific and technical equipment to the lunar surface.

For Firefly Aerospace, which was founded in 2017 by Ukrainian entrepreneur Max Polyakov and which went to orbit for the first time in October 2022, this is already the second contract within the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. In 2021, the company signed a $93.3 million contract with NASA to deliver cargo to the Moon by 2023.