With Artemis II successfully completing its historic lunar mission on Friday, NASA is banking on billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk for the next step: landing astronauts on the moon.
The Apollo program — which sent the first and only humans to the moon’s surface between 1969 and 1972 — was designed so that only two astronauts could land on the lunar surface for a maximum of a few days.
More than 50 years later, US ambitions and expertise have grown, with NASA hoping to send four people on a mission lasting several weeks and eventually building a lunar base.
Photo: NASA / Handout via Reuters.
For the second phase of its mission, the space agency is looking to commercial landers designed by Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’ Blue Origin to get its astronauts on the moon.
After Artemis II splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after its record-breaking journey, NASA officials urged all hands on deck for a crewed landing in 2028.
“We need all of industry to work and come along with us, and they need to accept that challenge and come with us and really start the production lines that are going to be required in order to achieve that goal,” NASA acting associate administrator Lori Glaze said.
The Apollo program relied on a single rocket, the Saturn V, which carried the lunar lander and the capsule carrying the astronauts.
NASA has opted for two separate systems for Artemis: the first to launch the Orion spacecraft carrying the crew from Earth, and another to launch the lunar lander, which would be privately contracted.
The decision was driven by the technical limitations of the Apollo program, said Kent Chojnacki, a senior NASA official in charge of lunar lander development.
“It was very not expandable to long-term exploration and long-term stays,” he said.
The systems that NASA is looking at now are “huge compared to Apollo,” Chojnacki said, adding that the new lunar landers being developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX are two to seven times larger than before.
The space agency is also drawing from external partners, such as the European companies that built the propulsion module for Orion.
The new approach opens access to more equipment and resources, but also significantly complicates operations.
To send these giant spacecrafts to the moon, the private space exploration companies would need to master in-flight refueling, a complex maneuver that has not yet been fully tested.
After the lunar lander is launched, additional rockets would be needed to deliver the fuel required for the journey to the moon, about 400,000km from Earth.
Given this risky undertaking and the numerous delays, pressure has mounted in recent months.
“We are once again about to lose the moon,” three former NASA officials last year warned in an article in SpaceNews.
China, which is hoping to send humans to the moon by 2030, has been making progress as well, raising fears in the US that it could get left behind.
With that in mind, NASA raised the possibility of reopening the contract awarded to SpaceX and using Blue Origin’s lunar lander first, sending shockwaves through the rival companies.
Both firms announced they were realigning their strategies to prioritize the lunar project, but concerns remain, particularly regarding the feasibility of in-orbit refueling.
“We do have a plan,” Chojnacki said, adding that NASA has a back-up plan in case of failure.
The timeline is also up in the air.
NASA said it plans to test an in-orbit rendezvous between the spacecraft and one or two lunar landers next year, and carry out a crewed lunar landing in 2028.
Before that, companies would need to test in-orbit refueling and send an unmanned lunar lander to the moon to demonstrate its safety.
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