The United States and China are locked in a contest to be the first country to send humans to the lunar surface in half a century. But there’s a developing twist: an emerging competition between American companies to build the landing vehicle that could win this new Moon race for the US.
The dust-up over the lunar lander could pit Elon Musk against his billionaire rival Jeff Bezos. And it has already sparked a war of words between Musk and Nasa’s acting chief, Sean Duffy, which exposes fault lines over the direction and leadership of the US space agency.
In April 2021 Musk’s company, SpaceX, was awarded the contract to develop the landing vehicle for Nasa’s Artemis III mission – the first return to the lunar surface by Americans since Apollo 17 in 1972. The lander was to be based on the innovative Starship vehicle, already under development at the time at the company’s base in south Texas.
