Blue Origin could benefit from SpaceX delay as NASA reopens moon lander contract

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Oct 21, 2025

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.— Interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said Monday that NASA was reopening the contract for the Artemis III moon lander after delays with development of SpaceX’s Starship.

SpaceX had been awarded the human landing system contract for both Artemis III and IV while Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin won a contract to service the Artemis V mission.

Speaking with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Duffy said he’s opening the contract back up to push to ensure a lunar landing by 2028.

“I love SpaceX. It’s an amazing company. The problem is they’re behind. They’ve pushed their timelines out, and we’re in a race against China,” he said. “The president and I want to get to the moon in this president’s term.”

Artemis II will be the first crewed mission of Orion launching atop the Space Launch System rocket, with a liftoff from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-B as soon as early February. That flight will only take astronauts around the moon without landing. The Artemis III mission looks to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.

A version of SpaceX’s in-development Starship had been tapped to be that human landing system, but the company is behind on its timeline. It recently launched an 11th suborbital test flight of the powerful rocket from its Texas site Starbase, but endured three mishaps earlier this year including in-flight explosions that sent debris cascading across the skies that were visible from Florida.

It still has to demonstrate a planned in-orbit fuel transfer from one Starship upper stage to another, and set up a series of what are essentially fuel depot stops for the spacecraft between Earth and the moon, and then perform an uncrewed test landing.

“I’m going to open up the contract. I’m letting other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin,” Duffy said. “Whatever one can get us there first, to the moon, we’re going to take, and if SpaceX is behind, but Blue Origin can do it before them, Good on Blue Origin.”

Blue Origin’s moon lander is the Blue Moon Mark 2, and the company opened up a factory at its Merritt Island manufacturing campus last month.

It’s nearly ready to fly up an uncrewed lander called the Mark 1, also built on the Space Coast. That lander would launch atop Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with the mission still slated to fly before the end of the year.

“That Mark 1 lander only takes one New Glenn. So we fuel it on New Glenn, and we launch it all the way to the moon,” said John Couluris, Blue Origin’s vice president of its lunar permanence division.

Couluris said Lunar Plant 1 has about 1,500 employees at work already.

“If NASA wants to accelerate us to go faster, then we would ramp that up faster,” he said. “It’s right now gauged on Artemis V. If they want us to go earlier, we would engage a lot faster.”

Duffy said opening the contract just means NASA can take the best option.

“We also might have two companies that can get us back to the moon in 2028, but again, we’re not going to wait for one company,” he said.

He said beating the Chinese to the lunar south pole would allow the U.S. to dictate how the moon’s resources, such as ice that can be converted into both air and rocket fuel, will be utilized.

“We’re going to push this forward and win the second space race against the Chinese, get back to the moon, set up a camp — a base — and from there we’re going to figure out how we can actually get to Mars,” he said.

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