It’s up to SpaceX and Blue Origin to stick the moon landing |
The Artemis II mission around the moon provided a conflicted nation with a much-needed wave of shared enthusiasm derived from achieving a lofty goal. The mission — a more comfortable and less complicated repeat of the Apollo 8 flight in 1968 — was the first step toward the dream of returning to the moon and never leaving.
Now comes the risky part.
NASA is betting on two relatively new space companies, SpaceX and Blue Origin, to build lunar landers and have them ready to test in an Artemis III mission next year. That would pave the way for the first mission back to the moon’s surface since the final Apollo flight in 1972. Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, just launched its New Glenn rocket for only the third time and is only now working on a human-rated orbital spacecraft, the Blue Moon lander.