The United States is opening up the contract for the Artemis 3 lunar mission to other companies after NASA administrator Sean Duffy said that Elon Musk’s SpaceX (SPACE) was behind schedule.
“I’m in the process of opening that contract up. I think we’ll see companies like Blue (NASDAQ:AMZN) get involved, and maybe others,” Duffy said Monday in an interview with Fox News. “We’re going to have a space race in regard to American companies competing to see who can actually get us back to the moon first.”
NASA’s Artemis missions aim to return astronauts to the moon for scientific discovery and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars. Through these missions, the U.S. is also racing against China, which is planning for a moon landing by 2030.
Duffy said the U.S. could lag behind rival China, as SpaceX was not on schedule, and that President Trump wants to see the mission successfully executed before his second presidency ends in January 2029.
“They’re behind schedule, and so the president wants to make sure we beat the Chinese,” Duffy told Fox.
The Artemis 3 mission will send the humans to explore the region near the lunar South Pole. The mission has been planned for 2027 with SpaceX’s Starship.