In a surprise move that was dictated by budget constraints, NASA is awarding $2.89 billion to SpaceX alone for the development of its Starship super-rocket as a lunar landing system for astronauts — leaving out Alabama-based Dynetics as well as a team led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.
If all proceeds according to plan, SpaceX would demonstrate Starship’s capabilities during an uncrewed mission to the lunar surface, and then follow up with a crewed demonstration mission for NASA’s Artemis moon program in the mid-2020s.
“NASA’s Artemis program is well underway, as you can see, and with our lander award today, landing the next two American astronauts on the moon is well within our reach,” Steve Jurczyk, the space agency’s acting administrator, said today during a teleconference announcing the award.
In a tweet, SpaceX said it was “humbled to help @NASAArtemis usher in a new era of human space exploration.”
NASA also plans to set up a follow-up competition for future crewed lunar landings that would be provided as a commercial service. Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said that could serve as another “on-ramp” for Blue Origin’s team and Dynetics.
One reply on “SpaceX wins out over Blue Origin for moon landings”
There has been quite a discussion under a similar story published by Space News about the political calculus in announcing this decision prior to the formal confirmation of Bill Nelson as NASA’s chief administrator. The upshot of the discussion? That this was a pre-emptive move by Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, to drive forward the debate about SLS (and what more and more people see as the merits of an outright cancellation of that too-expensive and under-achieving debacle).