Who will reach Moon first? Musk, Bezos compete for NASA contracts

As the space race among China, Russia and the United States (U.S.) intensifies, the U.S. billionaires are entering a race of their own and competing to get lucrative NASA contracts.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has contracted Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX to develop moon landers as the space agency prepares to put humans back on the moon by 2030.

The building of a moon lander for the upcoming Artemis III mission has put the two billionaires’ companies head-to-head in the high-stakes space contest.

The American space agency has also announced changes in the Artemis mission timeline. Artemis III will not be a moon landing mission as previously planned, instead it will be a low-Earth orbit test of NASA’s landing technology.

The Artemis IV mission, planned for 2028, will take humans to the moon.

SpaceX was originally contracted to provide the Starship Human Landing System to NASA; however, following leadership changes in the agency and delays by Musk’s space technology company, NASA decided to invite other bidders in October last year.

Bezos’s Blue Origin was also contracted and now the space agency says both landers could be involved in the Artemis III mission, which will practice docking the Orion crew capsule.

The company that delivers a ready lander before the scheduled Artemis III mission in 2027 will be selected.

SpaceX won the contract to build the Starship, capable of carrying 100 crew members and 200 tonnes of cargo, worth $2.89 billion. On the other hand, NASA paid a fixed $3.4 billion to Blue Origin to build a lander similar to the one used in the Apollo mission around 50 years ago.

SpaceX had a head start but it remains to be seen which company sees its lander take humans to the moon once again.