NASA acting administrator Sean Duffy made two television appearances on Monday morning in which he shook up the space agency’s plans to return humans to the moon.
Speaking on Fox News, where the secretary of transportation frequently appears in his acting role as NASA chief, Duffy said SpaceX has fallen behind in its efforts to develop the Starship vehicle as a lunar lander. Duffy also indirectly acknowledged that NASA’s projected target of a 2027 crewed lunar landing is no longer achievable. Accordingly, he said he intended to expand the competition to develop a lander capable of carrying humans down to the moon from lunar orbit and back.
“They’re behind schedule, and so the president wants to make sure we beat the Chinese,” Duffy said of SpaceX. “He wants to get there in his term. So I’m in the process of opening that contract up. I think we’ll see companies like Blue [Origin] get involved, and maybe others. We’re going to have a space race in regard to American companies competing to see who can actually lead us back to the moon first.”
There are a couple of significant takeaways from this interview. First is the public acknowledgment by a senior NASA official that the space agency’s current timeline of a 2027 landing is completely untenable. And secondly, the timing of Duffy’s public appearances on Monday seems tailored to influence a fierce, behind-the-scenes battle to hold onto the NASA leadership position.
“Opening That Contract Up”
SpaceX won a contract from NASA, worth $2.9 billion, in April 2021 to develop and modify its ambitious Starship rocket to serve as a “human landing system.” This rocket would work in concert with NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft to get humans from Earth to the lunar surface and back. Two years later, Blue Origin, a rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, won a second contract, worth $3.4 billion, to develop a second lander.
Duffy is correct that SpaceX is moving slower than anticipated. The company must cross several technical hurdles before it can provide landing services to NASA. In their funded contracts for reusable landers, SpaceX and Blue Origin must refuel their vehicles in low-Earth orbit, something that has never been done on a large scale.
When Duffy says “companies like Blue” may get involved, he is not referring to the existing contract, in which Blue Origin will not deliver a ready-to-go lunar lander until the 2030s. Rather he is almost certainly referring to a plan developed by Blue Origin that uses multiple Mk 1 landers, a smaller vehicle originally designed for cargo only. Ars reported on this new lunar architecture three weeks ago, which company engineers have been quietly developing. This plan would not require in-space refueling, and the Mk 1 vehicle is nearing its debut flight early next year.