NASA picked Elon Musk’s SpaceX to receive $2.9 billion to build a lunar lander as part of the Artemis mission to send humans to the Moon by 2024, NASA announced today. It’s a major vote of confidence in SpaceX from NASA as no other company received money.
There were three major contenders for the project. SpaceX beat out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, working with a selection of other aerospace companies, and Dynetics, a defense contractor. NASA had previously rewarded all three contenders with a combined $967 million to develop lunar lander concepts.
NASA tends to pick multiple contractors for its key programs to promote competition and to ensure there are several options in case a provider can’t make good on its proposal. It chose all three for the initial step of the contract last year but it has reportedly decided to go all in on SpaceX.
The company pitched its Starship for the Artemis missions. Although SpaceX has been encountering problems with the reusable spacecraft during testing (all of the prototypes have crashed and/or exploded thus far), NASA seems confident the company can get it right. SpaceX is still planning to take Starship into orbit later this year.
The contract would be a major victory for SpaceX. It’s already working with NASA to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, with the next mission scheduled for April 22nd.
When the Artemis program spun up under the Trump administration, the goal was to take astronauts back to the Moon in 2024, but the timeline for the project is under review. NASA doesn’t currently have the funding it needs to make the mission happen by 2024 either. The agency plans to land a woman and person of color on the Moon for the first time through the program, and it has put together a shortlist of eligible astronauts for the early missions.
