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By Joey Roulette WASHINGTON (Reuters) -NASA said on Monday it was opening the marquee U.S. moon landing contract to other bidders because Elon Musk's SpaceX has experienced mounting delays with its Starship lunar lander. The move paves the way for rivals such as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to snatch a high-profile mission to land the first astronauts on the moon in half a century. "I'm in the process of opening that contract up. I think we'll see companies like Blue get involved, and maybe others," the U.S. space agency's acting chief Sean Duffy, who also serves as U.S. Transportation Secretary, told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program. Duffy's comments follow months of mounting pressure within NASA to speed up its Artemis lunar program and push SpaceX to make greater progress on its Starship lunar lander, while China progresses toward its own goal of sending humans to the moon by 2030. They also present a major shift in NASA's lunar strategy, starting a new competitive juncture in the program for a human-rated moon lander just two years before the scheduled landing date. Blue Origin is widely expected to compete for the mission, while Lockheed Martin has indicated it would convene an industry team to heed NASA's call. Starship, picked by NASA in 2021 under a contract now worth $4.4 billion, faces a 2027 moon landing deadline that agency advisers estimate could slip years behind schedule, citing competing priorities. Musk sees Starship as crucial to launching larger batches of Starlink satellites to space and eventually ferrying humans to Mars, among other missions. "They do remarkable things, but they're behind schedule," Duffy said of SpaceX's lunar lander work, adding President Donald Trump wants to see the mission take place before his White House term ends in January 2029. Musk appeared to brush off the specter of more competition. "SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry," the SpaceX CEO wrote on X, replying to a user on Monday. "Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words." The mission involving SpaceX, Artemis 3, would be the first human lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972. Bezos' space company Blue Origin, with its Blue Moon lander in development, has a similar lunar landing contract awarded by NASA in 2023 but for later Artemis moon missions. The company had protested NASA's initial decision to only pick SpaceX in 2021 and fought for years to convince the agency and lawmakers to select another proposal as a redundancy. Duffy's reference to Blue Origin on Monday suggests Bezos' space company could contend for Artemis 3. NASA has not returned requests for comment and specifics on Duffy's remarks. Blue Origin has been developing its Blue Moon lander in Florida with relatively little public attention under a contract worth roughly $3 billion. SpaceX has been developing Starship in Texas in a whirlwind campaign of test-to-failure demonstration missions, but NASA has grown uneasy with a lack of progress on lunar lander-specific development milestones. In a statement to Reuters, Bob Behnken, vice president of Exploration and Technology Strategy at Lockheed Martin's space unit, said the company this year has been conducting "significant technical and programmatic analysis for human lunar landers." "We have been working with a cross-industry team of companies and together we are looking forward to addressing Secretary Duffy's request to meet our country’s lunar objectives," said Behnken, a retired NASA astronaut. NASA's multibillion-dollar Artemis program is a series of missions involving multiple contractors aimed at returning humans to the moon for a long-term presence there. Artemis 3 has been planned for 2027 with SpaceX's Starship. Artemis 2, a 10-day flight around the moon and back involving systems built by Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, is on track for April and could get moved up to February, he added. Bezos and Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp reportedly spoke with Trump over the summer when the Republican president was feuding with Musk, a supporter in the 2024 election who was tapped to lead efforts to cut the federal government known as DOGE. Representatives for SpaceX and Blue Origin could not immediately be reached for comment. (Reporting by Susan Heavey; additional reporting by Deborah Sophia and Jaspreet Singh; Editing by Nick Zieminski and David Gregorio)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Joey Roulette WASHINGTON (Reuters) -NASA said on Monday it was opening the marquee U.S. moon landing contract to other bidders because Elon Musk's SpaceX has experienced mounting delays with its Starship lunar lander. The move paves the way for rivals such as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to snatch a high-profile mission to land the first astronauts on the moon in half a century. "I'm in the process of opening that contract up. I think we'll see companies like Blue get involved, and maybe others," the U.S. space agency's acting chief Sean Duffy, who also serves as U.S. Transportation Secretary, told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program. Duffy's comments follow months of mounting pressure within NASA to speed up its Artemis lunar program and push SpaceX to make greater progress on its Starship lunar lander, while China progresses toward its own goal of sending humans to the moon by 2030. It represents a major shift in NASA's lunar strategy, starting a new competitive juncture in the program for a crewed moon lander just two years before the scheduled landing date. Blue Origin is widely expected to compete for the mission, while Lockheed Martin has indicated it would convene an industry team to heed NASA's call. Starship, picked by NASA in 2021 under a contract now worth $4.4 billion, faces a 2027 moon landing deadline that agency advisers estimate could slip years behind schedule, citing competing priorities. Musk sees Starship as crucial to launching larger batches of Starlink satellites to space and eventually ferrying humans to Mars, among other missions. "They do remarkable things, but they're behind schedule," Duffy said of SpaceX's lunar lander work, adding President Donald Trump wants to see the mission take place before his White House term ends in January 2029. The move is a significant change under the agency's acting leadership, and as the White House and Duffy begin to reopen the nomination process for a permanent administrator. Billionaire entrepreneur and SpaceX customer-astronaut Jared Isaacman, an ally of Musk's, is in talks to reclaim his nomination that had been yanked by Trump over the summer. Musk shrugged off the specter of more competition in a social media post. "SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry," the SpaceX CEO wrote on X, replying to a user on Monday. "Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words." The mission involving SpaceX, Artemis 3, would be the first human lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972. Bezos' space company Blue Origin, with its Blue Moon lander in development, has a similar lunar landing contract awarded by NASA in 2023 but for later Artemis moon missions. The company had protested NASA's initial decision to only pick SpaceX in 2021 and fought for years to convince the agency and lawmakers to select another proposal as a redundancy. Duffy's reference to Blue Origin on Monday suggests Bezos' space company could contend for Artemis 3. Blue Origin has been developing its Blue Moon lander in Florida with relatively little public attention under a contract worth roughly $3 billion. SpaceX has been developing Starship in Texas in a whirlwind campaign of test-to-failure demonstration missions, but NASA has grown uneasy with a lack of progress on lunar lander-specific development milestones. Pressed for details on Duffy's remarks, a NASA spokesperson said the agency has told SpaceX and Blue Origin to present accelerated moon landing plans by Oct. 29. "NASA is also going to request plans from the entire commercial space industry… for how NASA can increase the cadence of our mission to the moon," the spokesperson said. In a statement to Reuters, Bob Behnken, vice president of Exploration and Technology Strategy at Lockheed Martin's space unit, said the company this year has been conducting "significant technical and programmatic analysis for human lunar landers."  "We have been working with a cross-industry team of companies and together we are looking forward to addressing Secretary Duffy's request to meet our country’s lunar objectives," said Behnken, a retired NASA astronaut. NASA's multibillion-dollar Artemis program is a series of missions involving multiple contractors aimed at returning humans to the moon for a long-term presence there. Artemis 3 has been planned for 2027 with SpaceX's Starship. Artemis 2, a 10-day flight around the moon and back involving systems built by Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, is on track for April and could get moved up to February, he added. Bezos and Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp reportedly spoke with Trump over the summer when the Republican president was feuding with Musk, a supporter in the 2024 election who was tapped to lead efforts to cut the federal government known as DOGE. Representatives for SpaceX and Blue Origin could not immediately be reached for comment. (Reporting by Susan Heavey and Joey Roulette in Washington; additional reporting by Deborah Sophia and Jaspreet Singh; Editing by Nick Zieminski and David Gregorio)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Hyunjoo Jin, Heekyong Yang and Wen-Yee Lee SEOUL (Reuters) -The global rush by chipmakers to produce AI chips is tightening supply of less glamorous chips used in smartphones, computers and servers, spurring panic buying by some customers and a surge in their prices, industry executives and analysts said. The unexpected ripple effect of the AI boom is giving a much-needed boost to memory chipmakers, including Samsung Electronics, which has lagged rivals in offering advanced AI chips and a rally in their share prices. Supply of the more mundane semiconductors has become so tight that the global memory chip industry is poised to head into what some analysts call a "super cycle", as device makers frantically stock up on memory chips, executives said. "Within the last month or two, there's been a huge demand surge," Tobey Gonnerman, president of semiconductor distributor Fusion Worldwide, said. "It does seem like things have happened in a fast and furious way." "There is definitely scrambling going on and more soon. And there is double/triple ordering going on, like we’ve seen in many past shortages." PRODUCTION SHIFT SPURS SUPPLY SHORTAGE Memory chip makers started allocating more of their production capacity to high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, used to build Nvidia's powerful AI chipsets, after ChatGPT kicked off the generative AI craze following its release in November 2022 and a global rush to build AI data centres. Rising competition from lower-end chips from Chinese rivals like CXMT also prompted South Korea's Samsung and SK Hynix, which control around 70% of the global DRAM chip market, to accelerate moves to higher-end chips. "There's just so much money floating around, driving demand," said Dan Hutcheson, San Jose-based vice chair of research firm TechInsights, referring to a flurry of recent technology deals on chips and data centres. Major tech companies including Alphabet, Amazon.com, Meta, Microsoft and CoreWeave are expected to spend $400 billion on AI infrastructure this year, according to Morgan Stanley. That boom has coincided with a replacement cycle for traditional data centres and personal computers and better-than-expected phone sales, which is what is exacerbating tight supply of non-HBM memory chips and driving up their prices, analysts said. Traditional data centre operators are starting to upgrade or replace servers they had bought during the previous boom of 2017-2018. "They all were swimming in DDR5 server memory six or eight months ago. But now the average selling price on DDR5 server modules is going through the roof. And obviously that is music to the ears of Micron, Hynix and Samsung," Gonnerman said, referring to the mainstay server chips. Similarly, spot prices of DRAM, used in various applications, nearly tripled in September from a year earlier, after growing a meager 4% in April, according to data from TechInsights provided to Reuters. The average inventory of DRAM chips fell to just eight weeks in the current quarter, from 10 weeks a year earlier and 31 weeks in early 2023. Jeff Kim, head of research at KB Securities, expects non-HBM memory chips will surpass HBMs in terms of profitability next year should the current price increases continue. In the July to September period, Samsung generated an operating margin of about 40% for commodity DRAMs, and 60% for HBMs, Kim estimated. Micron forecast last month healthy margins in both HBM and non-HBM in 2026. On the flip side, surging chip prices threaten to add margin pressure on makers of consumer electronics and servers already grappling with increasing costs due to higher U.S. tariffs and potential supply chain disruptions stemming from China's broadening curbs on rare earth exports. "Recently, with the DRAM shortage this severe, we’re becoming more concerned," said Miller Chang, president of the Embedded Sector at Advantech, a Taiwan-based industrial PC provider. Some are passing the cost pressure onto consumers. British personal computer maker Raspberry Pi, for example, announced price increases earlier this month, citing memory costs roughly 120% more than a year ago. "We’ve now reached the point where we have to pass some of this cost on," its CEO Eben Upton said. CAUTION ON "SUPER CYCLE" The improving profitability of non-HBM chips has helped fuel memory chipmakers' share price rally this year, with Samsung's stock up more than 80%, while SK Hynix and Micron shares have soared 170% and 140% respectively. Taiwan memory makers and memory module companies' stock jumped over the past month due to the shortage of DDR4. Investors are on guard for signs of an AI bubble. Hutcheson said the term "supercycle" is overdone, saying the industry is going through a classic shortage that usually lasts a year or two, and TechInsights is forecasting a chip industry downturn in 2027. Samsung is well-placed to benefit from the boom, given its heavier exposure to non-HBM chips. But investors remain cautious on how quickly it may be able to narrow a big gap with SK Hynix in HBM chips and TSMC in contract semiconductor manufacturing. "The extreme pessimism turned into extreme optimism for Samsung. We have to wait and see," Albert Yong, a managing partner at Petra Capital Management, a Seoul-based Samsung investor, said. (Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Sonali Paul)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)