March 31, 2023

Why billionaires are fighting over who gets to land humans on the moon

Why billionaires are fighting over who gets to land humans on the moon
Why billionaires are fighting over who gets to land humans on the moonWhy billionaires are fighting over who gets to land humans on the moon
New Scientist Default Image

Elon Musk heads SpaceX, a space-flight company that has been awarded a NASA contract to build a lunar lander

John Raoux/AP/Shutterstock

SpaceX is going to the moon, and its competitors are complaining. On 16 April, NASA announced that it had selected Elon Musk’s space-flight company to build the lunar lander that will take humans to the moon’s surface as part of its Artemis programme. SpaceX beat out two rivals that hoped to secure the $2.9 billion contract – defence firm Dynetics and private space-flight company Blue Origin – both of which …