"It has the landscape; it looks like the Moon. And it has the scale of features astronauts will both be observing and exploring," NASA's Cindy Evans said.

According to a large team of technical and health specialists, astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will be well protected from radiation when the Artemis II mission travels to the moon and back next year.

With NASA's crewed mission to the moon only a year away, first results from radiation experiments onboard Artemis 1 suggest short trips are within human limits, but longer missions or travel to Mars may be challenging.

NASA awarded Intuitive Machines a long-term contract potentially worth $4.82 billion to develop, launch, and operate a five-satellite communications and navigation network around the moon.

Intuitive Machines has won a NASA contract worth up to $4.8 billion to provide communications and navigation services at the moon to support Artemis.

Intuitive Machines is “the leading beneficiary of NASA’s lunar commercialization efforts,” says B. Riley Securities analyst Mike Crawford.