NASA<\/b>\u2019s Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said that he is in the process of re-opening the agency\u2019s Moon lander contract with SpaceX <\/b>for competition, saying Monday that SpaceX is behind on the program. <\/p>\n
\u201cSpaceX is an amazing company. They do remarkable things, but they\u2019re behind schedule. The President wants to make sure we beat the Chinese \u2014 he wants to get there on his terms. So I\u2019m in the process of opening that contract up,\u201d Duffy said in a Monday morning in an appearance on Fox News. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ll see companies like Blue [Origin] get involved and maybe others. We\u2019re going to have a space race in regard to American companies competing to see who can actually get us back to the Moon first,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
NASA awarded SpaceX the Human Landing Systems (HLS) contract in 2021 followed by a second contract option in 2022, for about $4 billion in total awards for the Artemis III and IV missions on the Starship rocket. <\/p>\n
But SpaceX faced a string of three Starship test failures in a row this year, with test flights ending in uncontrolled reentry, and others breaking apart over the Caribbean and disrupting air travel. <\/p>\n
The program\u2019s most recent two flights in August and October were successful, but SpaceX has more difficult milestones ahead. The company is now working toward the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy, which will be used for the first Starship orbital flights, operational payload missions, and propellant transfer. Propellant transfer demonstration is the key technical challenge with V3, with SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell recently talking about the \u201ctough\u201d development ahead. <\/p>\n
Duffy said in another appearance on CNBC\u2019s \u201cSquawk Box\u201d that SpaceX is behind on milestones. He did not say specifically how NASA will re-open the HLS contract, but that NASA wants to land on the Moon during President Trump\u2019s current term. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to let other companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin,\u201d Duffy said in CNBC. \u201cWhatever one can get us there first, we\u2019re going to take. If SpaceX is behind, but Blue Origin can do it before them, good on Blue Origin. We also might have two companies that can get us back to the Moon in 2028. Again, we\u2019re not going to wait for one company.\u201d <\/p>\n
Blue Origin also has an HLS contract, which NASA awarded in 2023, to develop its Blue Moon lander for the Artemis V mission. <\/p>\n
Last year, NASA pushed back timelines for Artemis III, originally scheduled for 2025, now targeted for mid-2027, citing delays with the Orion space capsule, which is designed by Lockheed Martin. <\/p>\n
Duffy said Monday that the Artemis II crewed lunar flyby mission (which SpaceX is not part of), that is currently scheduled for April 2026, may be moved up to February 2026. Artemis III will launch \u201ca couple years after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. government is currently shut down. Duffy told CNBC that employees at NASA working on the Artemis program are working without pay, and \u201csome science projects that Democrats love\u201d have been paused. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NASA\u2019s Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said that he is in the process of re-opening the agency\u2019s Moon lander contract with SpaceX for competition, saying Monday that SpaceX is behind on the program. \u201cSpaceX is an amazing company. They do remarkable things, but they\u2019re behind schedule. The President wants to make sure we beat the Chinese […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48186"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}