Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duff said he planned to reopen the contract with SpaceX to deliver astronauts to the Moon as part of the Artemis III mission, as the company was behind schedule.
In 2021, SpaceX won a $2.9 billion contract for the Human Landing System (HLS) program. As part of this, it undertook the creation of a lander that would deliver the Artemis III expedition participants to the South Pole of the Moon. A modified version of the Starship spacecraft will be used for this purpose.
At present, the launch of Artemis III is formally scheduled for 2027. However, due to a number of delays in the implementation of various programs, it is highly unlikely that it will take place on schedule. The current acting administrator of NASA has effectively shifted all responsibility for this exclusively to SpaceX.
“SpaceX had the contract for Artemis III,” Duffy said on CNBC. “The problem is they’re behind. They push their timelines out, and we’re in a race against China. The president and I want to get to the moon in this president’s term.”
“So, I’m going to open up the contract,” he continued. “I’m going to let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin, and again, whatever one can get us there first, to the moon, we’re going to take.”
Duffy made similar comments on Fox News. “SpaceX has the contract. SpaceX is an amazing company. They do remarkable things, but they’re behind schedule,” he said. “So, I’m in the process of opening that contract up.”
“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,” he said.
Duffy did not explain how such a “space race” would take place or how it would be financed. One of the competitors he mentioned is Blue Origin, which received a separate HLS contract to develop the Blue Moon Mark 2 landing module for missions starting with Artemis V. The company is reported to have explored ways to adapt its small Blue Moon Mark 1 lander for a crewed mission, although one industry source described these concepts as “jury-rigged” and noted that the Mark 1 currently cannot lift off from the lunar surface with any payload.
Other American companies are also exploring concepts for lunar landing modules. Lockheed Martin claims it can build such a vehicle in just 30 months. However, in terms of its capabilities, it will be comparable to the Apollo program modules, and its creation will cost more than $30 billion. This is ten times more than SpaceX received under its initial contract with NASA.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk expressed no concern about potential competition. “They won’t,” he wrote on social media in response to a comment that it was “foolish” to think that another company could prepare a landing module before Starship. “SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry.”
“Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole moon mission. Mark my words,” he added.
According to Spacenews
