NASA delays lunar landing to 2025

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NASA is pushing back its target date for returning humans to the Moon, now eyeing a crewed lunar landing in 2025 instead of 2024 as originally planned. NASA blames the delay on recent lawsuits over contracts for the agency’s lunar lander, as well as changes to the scope of some of NASA’s programs and the COVID-19 pandemic.



The space agency is eyeing a human lunar return with its flagship program, called Artemis. As part of the initiative, NASA hopes to land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon this decade while working to figure out sustainable ways to live and work on the lunar surface. Artemis relies on a complicated suite of vehicles, including the Space Launch System, or SLS, a massive new rocket NASA has been developing for the past decade that’s designed to send people into deep space and near the Moon inside a new crew capsule called Orion. In April, NASA also granted a $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX to develop the company’s Starship vehicle to land people gently on the Moon’s surface.

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Drama surrounding the lunar lander that is critical for taking people down to the Moon’s surface has exacerbated the problem further. NASA originally hoped to award contracts to two companies to build human lunar landers, to promote competition, and have more than one option. The agency even narrowed down the selection to three finalists: SpaceX, Dynetics, and the Jeff Bezos-run Blue Origin. But after receiving less funding than expected from Congress, NASA only awarded one contract to SpaceX, prompting Blue Origin to both protest and then file a lawsuit over the decision in federal court.



That litigation played a significant role in the delay to 2025, NASA says, because it prevented the space agency and SpaceX from working together on the lunar lander project. “We’ve lost nearly seven months in litigation, and that rightly has pushed the first human landing, likely to no earlier than 2025,” NASA administration Bill Nelson said today during a press conference.