NASA's Acting Administrator has admitted that SpaceX is behind in plans to return astronauts to the Moon, has reopened lander contract competition, and pushed the deadline for a lunar landing to the end of the Trump administration in 2029.
Elon Musk, the boss of SpaceX, fired back: "SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words."
As we noted last week, SpaceX has a mountain to climb to develop NASA's Human Landing System (HLS). After a slew of unplanned explosions, the company achieved two sub-orbital missions for its monster rocket - impressive, but still more than 200,000 miles (322,000 km) from the Moon.
NASA's patience has worn thin. Despite praising SpaceX as an "amazing company" doing "remarkable things," Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said the company was "behind schedule" and he's opening the astronaut landing contract to competition. "The President wants to make sure we beat the Chinese. He wants to get there in his term."
So, Artemis III could be slipping to the end of 2028 (or January 2029 at a pinch), and SpaceX might not be doing the landing. Duffy called out Blue Origin, "and maybe others," as alternatives to Musk's rocketeers.
In 2021, SpaceX bagged the lunar lander contract, beating Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Dynetics. The inevitable lawsuit from Blue Origin was filed in August that year, which halted work for a few months, before the claims were dismissed in November, 2021.
The original 2024 landing target has already slipped to 2027 — but even that looks increasingly unrealistic. Artemis II won't launch until 2026, and in September, NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel expressed serious doubts about SpaceX's HLS readiness.
According to a New York Times report, the HLS variant of Starship might not be ready until 2032. Musk dismissed it: "It's not worth lining a parrot cage with NY Times, let alone reading it."
Yet Duffy's announcement confirms NASA is finally acknowledging that SpaceX is behind and 2027 is wishful thinking rather than reality.
Blue Origin is currently scheduled to land a crew on the Moon with Artemis V in 2030 [PDF, page 6]. As the Apollo program demonstrated, sufficient government funding can put boots on the regolith quickly. SpaceX can also rebid.
The bigger question is that with NASA's budget already struggling to maintain current science funding, where will the agency find the cash needed to land astronauts before Trump's term ends? ®