Lisa Watson-Morgan, Human Landing System (HLS) program manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said the HLS program is considering “some interesting methods” that could help stretch out its budget for an additional month or so in the event that Congress faces further delays in passing a final appropriations bill for fiscal year 2021, SpaceNews reported Monday.
NASA requested $3.2 billion in FY 2021 funds for the HLS program and Watson-Morgan reiterated the need for the agency to receive that funding in order to support the lunar landing mission in 2024.
“We are certainly also planning to get additional funding so that we can achieve the moon landing in 2024,” she said Monday during a session at the American Astronautical Society’s Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium.
NASA awarded SpaceX, Blue Origin and Leidos’ Dynetics subsidiary 10-month contracts worth $967 million combined in late April to design and build human landing systems for the Artemis moon mission in 2024.
“Right now our base period goes through February 28th, and we are funded to complete all the base period milestones,” Watson-Morgan said of those contracts with the three companies.