NASA opens SpaceX's moon lander contract to rivals over Starship delays

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)

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