NASA has announced that it will reopen bidding for its flagship U.S. moon landing contract, citing mounting delays in Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship lunar lander project.
The decision clears the way for competitors such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to compete for the high-profile mission to return astronauts to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years.
NASA’s acting chief, Sean Duffy who also serves as U.S. Transportation Secretary told Fox News that the agency would “open the contract up,” saying, “I think we’ll see companies like Blue get involved, and maybe others.”
The decision follows months of internal pressure to accelerate the Artemis lunar programme and push SpaceX to make greater progress, especially as China advances towards its goal of sending humans to the Moon by 2030. The move marks a major shift in NASA’s lunar strategy, launching a new competitive phase for the crewed lander programme just two years before the scheduled mission.
Starship, initially selected in 2021 under a $4.4 billion contract, faces a 2027 landing deadline, one that NASA advisers fear could slip by several years due to competing priorities. While SpaceX’s vehicle is also central to Musk’s wider ambitions, including expanding the Starlink satellite network and future Mars missions, NASA has reportedly grown concerned about the lack of lunar-specific progress.
Duffy acknowledged SpaceX’s achievements but noted that the company is behind schedule, adding that President Donald Trump wants the mission completed before his term ends in January 2029. NASA has now asked both SpaceX and Blue Origin to submit accelerated moon landing plans by 29 October and is inviting proposals from other commercial space firms to increase the pace of lunar missions.
Blue Origin, which was awarded a separate $3 billion contract in 2023 for later Artemis missions, is expected to be a key contender. Lockheed Martin has also confirmed that it is analysing technical and programmatic options for human lunar landers in collaboration with other industry partners.
NASA’s Artemis programme aims to establish a sustained human presence on the Moon, with Artemis 2, a 10-day lunar flyby on track for early 2026 and Artemis 3 targeting a 2027 landing.
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Belgium has marked the 10th-anniversary of the 2016 Brussels terror attacks, remembering the victims of the country’s deadliest peacetime attack and reflecting on changes to national security.
A drone attack on a hospital in East Darfur, Sudan, has killed at least 64 people and injured 89 more, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Saturday. Victims included children and medical staff, and the attack has put the facility out of service.
Cuba’s national power grid went down on Saturday, cutting electricity for millions, officials said. The outage marks the second nationwide blackout in a week and the third major grid failure in March.
Iran has launched long-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles towards the joint U.S.-UK military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, in what Israeli officials said was a major escalation in the war.
Israel reportedly launched a fresh wave of attacks on Iran on Friday (20 March), a day after U.S. President Donald Trump told it not to repeat its strikes on Iranian natural gas infrastructure, which sharply escalated the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
President Donald Trump said the U.S. was considering "winding down" its military operation against Iran, as Iran and Israel traded attacks on Saturday (21 March) and Iranian media said the nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz had been attacked.
Carlos Ray “Chuck” Norris, the martial artist, actor and cultural icon best known for his roles in action films and the long-running CBS series Walker, Texas Ranger, has died at the age of 86.
The trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day has officially become the most-watched trailer of all time, racking up 718.6 million views in its first 24 hours and surpassing the previous record set by Deadpool & Wolverine in 2024.
Slovenia heads to the polls on Sunday (22 March) in a closely contested race between incumbent Prime Minister Robert Golob and right-wing former Prime Minister Janez Janša.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has detected what scientists believe may be the underground remains of an ancient river delta on Mars, offering some of the strongest evidence yet that water once flowed across the planet’s surface billions of years ago.
Britain is considering introducing labels for AI-generated content to protect consumers from disinformation and deepfakes, the government said on Wednesday (18 March), as it sets out the next phase of its approach to regulating artificial intelligence.
Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD is pushing to make charging an electric car almost as quick and convenient as filling up a traditional petrol vehicle - a move that could help remove one of the biggest barriers to wider electric vehicle adoption.
South Korea will soon cease to be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not function fully, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade-old policy and approved the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers.
New research suggests 40,000-year-old carved objects from south-western Germany bear repeated marks arranged in organised sign sequences similar to early proto-cuneiform, although they are not regarded as a form of writing.
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