By Joey Roulette WASHINGTON (Reuters) -NASA's top official on Monday said the U.S. space agency was opening up the contract for its Artemis 3 astronaut moon landing to compete against billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX, the mission's current contractor, which was running behind schedule. "I'm in the process of opening that contract up. I think we'll see companies like Blue get involved, and maybe others," NASA administrator Sean Duffy, who also serves as U.S. Transportation Secretary, told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program. Blue Origin is a SpaceX rival founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, former president and CEO of Amazon.com. "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." Since 2021, SpaceX has had a NASA contract, now worth $4.4 billion, to land humans on the moon by 2027 using its Starship rocket. The increasingly delayed target date is mostly aimed at beating China's 2030 moon landing goal. The mission would be the first human lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972. Blue Origin, with its Blue Moon lander, has a similar lunar landing contract awarded by NASA in 2023 but for later Artemis missions. The company had fought for years for that contract, pushing NASA and lawmakers to select a second lander for redundancy. Duffy's remarks on Monday suggest Blue Origin could soon compete to snatch the Artemis 3 mission from SpaceX, whose delayed Starship has raised concerns among agency officials in recent months. NASA did not immediately return requests for comment and specifics on Duffy's remarks. 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. But Duffy said Musk's SpaceX was not on schedule and could put the U.S. behind its rival, with President Donald Trump wanting to see the mission take place before his White House term ends in January 2029. "They're behind schedule, and so the president wants to make sure we beat the Chinese," Duffy told Fox. 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, who backed Trump in the 2024 election and went on to lead the broad effort 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.)
