Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk officially have something else in common, as NASA awarded its second moon landing contract for the Artemis program to a large group of aerospace companies led by Blue Origin.
“I’ve said it before. We want more competition,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson at a press conference Friday. “We want two landers, and that’s better. It means that you have reliability. You have backups. It benefits NASA. It benefits the American people.”
Musk-owned SpaceX already is tasked to bring astronauts back to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972 with a version of its in-development Starship on NASA’s Artemis III mission currently targeting November 2025. Starship also has the contract for Artemis IV that isn’t slated until 2028.
