U.S. Federal prosecutors launched an investigation against the former Deputy administrator of the National management of the USA on Aeronautics and space research (NASA) for manned spaceflight Douglas Loverro. As reported on Friday the newspaper the Wall Street Journal, he is suspected of providing the aerospace Corporation the Boeing preferential treatment in the tender for the development of the descent module within the program of development of the moon Artemis.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Prosecutor’s office of the district of Columbia Metropolitan intends to establish the legitimacy of the contacts Loverro with the senior Vice President of the division for space and military applications Boeing Jim Chilton. It is assumed that Loverro, through informal channels and not having the powers, informed Chilton that the leadership of NASA Boeing plans to refuse to grant the tender for the creation of the lunar module because of its high cost and technical features.
A few days after this, the publication, the group presented to NASA an updated draft of the module. However, the application was rejected due to the fact that the leadership of Boeing violated the terms of the submission of the required changes. In the end, the tender for the creation of the descent module were divided between the companies, SpaceX, Elon musk, Blue Origin by Jeff Bezos, as well as Dynetics.
In June, the same publication reported that the investigation against Loverro on the same occasion was launched by the General on NASA. According to the publication, the Director of NASA, James Breidenstein may 18, Loverro suggested to resign. Deputy head of manned programs the next day he wrote a farewell letter to a subordinate that he "earlier this year took a big risk because of the need to complete the task". Loverro has not explained what he meant.
lunar program
NASA in late April chose SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics to develop a lunar lander designed for landing astronauts on the moon, Boeing dropped out of the tender in December last year. The company’s Mask was offered as his version of a landing module of the spacecraft reusable Starship, Blue Origin – the module is Integrated Lander Vehicle (ILV), the Dynetics – Dynetics two-stage system Human Landing System (DHLS). The volume of these contracts amounted to $135 million, $579 million and $253 million respectively.
In the spring of 2019, NASA announced the moon program Artemis, which will consist of three stages. The first of them (Artemis 1) provides unmanned flight is installed on the rocket SLS (Space Launch System) and Orion spacecraft around the moon and return to Earth, he was scheduled for the second half of 2020, but was later postponed to 2021 due to delays caused by a pandemic of a novel coronavirus. The second stage (Artemis 2) – flyby of Earth’s natural satellite with the crew on Board�� – scheduled for 2022. In the third phase of the mission (Artemis 3) NASA expects to carry out the landing of astronauts on the moon in 2024.
