Musk’s SpaceX Beats Out Bezos And Blue Origin For NASA Spacecraft Contract Worth $2.89-Billion

NASA picked Elon Musk’s SpaceX as the sole company to build spacecraft that will send humans back to the moon for the first time since the early 1970s, thus five decades in total, on a $2.89 billion contract, the space agency announced Friday, dashing the hopes of Jeff Bezos and his company Blue Origin, as Musk collects his latest and among most significant victories in the billionaire space race.

The fixed-price contract is a major vote of confidence for Elon Musk’s rocket company, as the space agency is placing a large amount of responsibility for its cornerstone human spaceflight program, known as Artemis, on SpaceX.

Friday’s announcement is certainly a blow to Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, which had proposed working as a “National Team” alongside corporate behemoths such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to design and build a lunar lander, and to Alabama-based Dynetics, which had put in its own bid. But ultimately, SpaceX won with its bid to use a spacecraft the company is already developing on its own in South Texas.

That vehicle, called Starship, is also the linchpin of Musk’s personal goal of landing the first humans on Mars. Test flights of early Starship prototypes have all ended in explosions thus far, but the company is rapidly building new test vehicles.

Musk tweeted “NASA Rules!!” in response to the decision. The SpaceX Starship, which is designed to land on the moon, will include a spacious cabin and two airlocks for moonwalks, NASA said. The goal is to eventually develop a fully reusable launch and landing system that can be used for space travel to destinations including the moon and Mars. The mission will see four astronauts launched on NASA’s Orion spacecraft into lunar orbit, where two of them will transfer to the SpaceX human landing system for their final journey to the moon.

The two astronauts will explore the lunar surface for around a week before returning to Earth. They will be the first people to walk on the moon for more than 50 years. At least one of the two will be a woman. NASA also aims to bring the first person of colour to the moon’s surface as part of the Artemis programme. The US brought 12 astronauts to the moon between 1969 and 1972.

SpaceX was also previously selected to build another version of Dragon to carry cargo to Stargate, the space station NASA plans to put in orbit around the moon to support a future moon base where astronauts can live and work for extended periods of time.