Nasa’s top official on Monday said the US space agency was opening up the contract for its Artemis 3 astronaut moon landing to compete against billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the mission’s current contractor, which was running late.
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“I’m in the process of opening that contract up. I think we’ll see companies like Blue [Origin] get involved and maybe others,” Nasa administrator Sean Duffy, who also serves as US transport secretary, told Fox News’ Fox & Friends programme.
Blue Origin is a SpaceX rival founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, former president and CEO of Amazon.
“We’re going to have a space race in regard to American companies competing to see who can actually get us back to the moon first,” Duffy said.
Since 2021, SpaceX has had a Nasa contract, now worth US$4.4 billion, to land humans on the moon by 2027 using its Starship rocket.
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The increasingly delayed target date is mostly aimed at beating China’s 2030 moon landing goal. The mission would be the first human lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.
Blue Origin, with its Blue Moon lander, has a similar lunar landing contract awarded by Nasa in 2023 but for later Artemis missions.