NASA’s Acting Administrator Sean Duffy sys that SpaceX’s Moon Lander programme is running late. He praised the Elon Musk business but admitted that SpaceX is behind on the schedule. Duffy said that NASA would reopen the contract to other bidders.

“The President wants to make sure we beat the Chinese — he wants to get there on his terms. So I’m in the process of opening that contract up,” Duffy said in a Fox News telecast. “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 get us back to the Moon first.”

Musk’s rival Jeff Bezos is backing the Blue Origin rocket company.

However, Musk responded almost immediately on X saying “Sean Dummy is Trying to Kill NASA” and later “Should someone whose biggest claim to fame is climbing trees be running America’s space program?” One well-placed observer later said: “Starship will end up doing the whole moon mission. Mark my words”.

NASA awarded SpaceX a Human Landing Systems (HLS) contract back in 2021 followed by a second contract option in 2022, for about $4 billion in total for the Artemis III and IV missions on the Starship rocket.

However, SpaceX’s Starship has suffered a number of problems and while the past two test flights have been successful they were preceded by three failures including uncontrolled re-entry and the Starship suffering complete destruction.

Duffy, then speaking on CNBC’s business news channel, admitted that SpaceX was behind schedule. “I’m going to let other companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin,” Duffy said in CNBC. “Whatever one can get us there first, we’re going to take. If SpaceX is behind, but Blue Origin can do it before them, good on Blue Origin. We also might have two companies that can get us back to the Moon in 2028. Again, we’re not going to wait for one company.”

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