Featured Image Credit: Julia Demaree Nikhinson - Pool/Getty Images
NASA has big plans for getting astronauts back on the Moon and it will involve a major showdown between two of the world’s most high-profile space companies.
Both Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are building the commercial landers for the project but it seems that Bezos’ firm has seen some setbacks.
This comes after its New Glenn rocket exploded during a routine test of its engines.
At the time, Bezos took to X, formerly Twitter, to write: “All personnel are accounted for and safe. Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.”
Head of NASA, Jared Isaacman, also took to X to share a statement on the matter, saying: “NASA is aware of the anomaly that occurred tonight at Launch Complex 36 involving Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
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“Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult. We will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and get back to launching rockets.
“We will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available.”
These latest difficulties have raised new concerns about NASA’s lunar ambitions, with the space agency aiming to put humans back on the Moon by 2028 and establish a long-term presence on the lunar surface.
This includes hopes of eventually developing a permanent lunar base, although the recent setback has certainly cast public doubt on the plans, which could only become more complicated as Blue Origin and SpaceX continue their battle to become the company that helps take humans back to the Moon.
However, this doesn’t appear to have deterred NASA, with Isaacman going on to write in a separate post: “Sixty years ago, Surveyor 1 helped pave the way for Apollo by answering critical questions about operating on the lunar surface. Today, as we prepare to build the Moon Base, we’re dusting off the NASA playbook from the 1960s and beginning with the Science of Survival, learning what works and what doesn’t as we build the knowledge required so we never give up the Moon again.”
The space agency shared a detailed plan of its ambition to create a long-term American presence on the lunar surface.
On the NASA website, it announced a series of agencywide initiatives designed to achieve President Donald Trump’s National Space Policy and ‘advance American leadership in space’.
NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said: “On the Moon, we are shifting to a focused, phased architecture that builds capability landing by landing, incrementally, and in alignment with our industrial and international partners.”
