NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy revealed that the agency is reopening the contract for the first U.S. crewed lunar landing since the 1970s, inviting proposals from companies beyond SpaceX’s Starship.

The lunar competition between the US and China extends beyond national prestige to strategic resource control.

NASA's acting chief, Sean Duffy, revealed SpaceX's Artemis III moon landing project is behind schedule. He emphasized a competitive approach, opening contracts for companies like Blue Origin to vie for the lunar return.

Team members at Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, La. load the first core stage onto the Pegasus barge on Tuesday, July 16, 2024, as part of NASA's Artemis II mission. The barge is supposed to ferry the core stage to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

About 3,000 personnel working on Artemis projects will remain on the job without pay during the government shutdown.

The space agency has been grappling with budget uncertainties and a talent exodus even before the shutdown. But NASA’s moon program has remained largely untouched.

In the 1960s, Frank Sinatra's song "Fly Me to the Moon" became closely associated with the Apollo missions. The optimistic track was recorded in 1964, when US success against the Soviet Union in the moon race was not assured.

As nations and private companies prepare to ramp up the number of missions to the Moon, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and Texas A&M University have secured a $1 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to develop a system to track and monitor resident space objects — including spacecraft,