{"text":[[{"start":12.15,"text":"Jeff Bezos’s rocket company has emerged as the biggest winner in Nasa’s first round of commercial contracts granted for its $20bn Moon Base that will cover several hundred square miles near the lunar south pole."}],[{"start":24.4,"text":"Blue Origin will receive $468mn for two uncrewed landers, the US space agency announced on Tuesday, adding that Astrolab and Lunar Outpost would each receive a $220mn contract to build unmanned rovers that could carry astronauts in the future."}],[{"start":41.7,"text":"The contracts awarded on Tuesday focused on the first phase of building the Moon Base’s infrastructure, with no update on the Artemis missions which will carry astronauts to the Moon. In summer 2027 Artemis 3 is scheduled to carry out docking manoeuvres in Earth’s orbit with rival crewed landers from Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which did not receive contracts on Tuesday. "}],[{"start":63.35,"text":"As SpaceX vies to be chosen to land astronauts on the Moon in 2028, the first such mission since 1972, it is on the cusp of a $1.75tn initial public offering and last week completed a successful test involving its Starship rocket. "}],[{"start":79.4,"text":"Blue Origin suffered a setback in April when it grounded its New Glenn rocket — which it plans to use to ferry commercial and government payloads into space — after losing a customer’s satellite. "}],[{"start":90.4,"text":"Federal regulators concluded an investigation last week after approving the company’s report into the failure, paving the way for Bezos’s company to undertake further launches in the coming months. "}],[{"start":100.85000000000001,"text":"Jared Isaacman, Nasa’s administrator, on Tuesday said the agency wanted to work with a wide range of commercial partners to develop different approaches. "}],[{"start":110.00000000000001,"text":"“Every mission, crewed and uncrewed, will be a learning opportunity as we return to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay, and master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable,” he said. “We are dusting off the 1960s [Apollo] playbook.”"}],[{"start":128.35000000000002,"text":"Carlos García-Galán, Moon Base programme director, said the base needed to “sprawl a little like a city” over hundreds of square miles. “There’s no one spot on the moon that covers all the science, all the technology, all the habitation needs,” he said. "}],[{"start":143.35000000000002,"text":"Some activities would need to be on sunlit hilltops, others such as extracting ice to make water would be in permanently shaded regions. Lunar mining and nuclear power generation would be kept apart from the places where people lived. "}],[{"start":157.60000000000002,"text":"Rob Meyerson, former president of Blue Origin and chief executive of Interlune, a space mining start-up which will support Astrolab’s lunar rover development, said Tuesday’s announcement reflected work under Isaacman to create a clear mission for the agency after acting administrators were at the helm for much of the past year. "}],[{"start":176.35000000000002,"text":"“SpaceX and Blue Origin now know what is expected of them . . . We [Interlune] know we have to have a rover that astronauts can ride when they reach the Moon in 2028,” he said."}],[{"start":186.20000000000002,"text":"Firefly Aerospace was awarded a $75mn contract to deliver four drones made by Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They will survey potential landing sites for the Artemis astronauts. The drones will later be used to mark the perimeter of the Moon Base."}],[{"start":203.10000000000002,"text":"Isaacman on Tuesday said the US would respect the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which forbids national appropriation of territory on the Moon and other celestial bodies. "}],[{"start":214.50000000000003,"text":"In an apparent reference to China, which aims to land a crew on the Moon by 2030 and then set up a lunar base, he said: “We are respectful of other nations that are putting assets on the lunar surface. We would expect that respect to be reciprocal.” "}],[{"start":239.75000000000003,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1779874045_8547.mp3"}