The contract award marked a huge victory for Musk and SpaceX and a triumph over Dynetics and Blue Origin, which at the time had assembled a ‘’national team” for the effort that included Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Draper. But in 2021, NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract for the first human landing of the Artemis program, a mission known as Artemis III that is scheduled for 2025 but probably will be delayed. He has said that watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon in 1969 was a ‘’seminal moment” for him.īlue Origin appeared to be the favorite for the first Artemis landing contract because it had obtained the most money in a preliminary round. Moon landings have been a priority of Blue Origin and one of Bezos’s lifelong passions. And today’s announcement is about maintaining that cadence.’’

Speaking at the announcement Friday morning, Nelson said that the space agency has ‘’big goals for our Artemis program, about a mission a year to the lunar surface for stays for astronauts up to 30 days. Speaking at a Thursday event on Capitol Hill while flanked by astronauts, Nelson said that “the kind of cuts that you have seen talked about would be devastating to NASA, to our programs, and what you’re being presented with today - a crew that is taking us back to the moon after half a century.’’ In recent weeks, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has warned, however, that if negotiations over federal spending result in budget cuts, as some are proposing, there could be significant disruptions to the moon missions as well as other programs. The Artemis program was started by the Donald Trump administration but has been embraced by President Biden, giving NASA a continuity of purpose that it had lacked in previous decades.

Twice in the blue moon