NASA’s Artemis reboot aborts SpaceX and boosts China’s lunar ambitions

NASA just handed Elon Musk a very public reality check—and virtually threw its own moon plans into the trashcan, although the U.S. space agency won’t be admitting that. SpaceX isn’t necessarily the shoo-in to land the first Americans on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission 52 years ago. Instead, NASA is opening the contract to other companies, like Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin.

While this doesn’t mean that SpaceX won’t get it, it’s the agency’s way of slamming SpaceX for its delays and lack of focus on the lunar program. Reopening the marquee Artemis crewed landing contract to competition is an admission that the Starship won’t be ready on time. America’s return to the lunar surface needs a plan B. It’s a big shift that weakens SpaceX’s grip, yes, but also rattles Artemis, and—crucially—tilts the new space race toward China.

“I’m in the process of opening that contract up,” NASA’s acting chief Sean Duffy said on Fox & Friends, pointing squarely to Starship’s mounting schedule slips. He added that he expects “companies like Blue Origin” and possibly others to bid, putting Jeff Bezos’s Blue Moon lander back in contention two years before the alleged scheduled landing date. NASA also told SpaceX and Blue Origin to deliver accelerated landing plans by October 29, and it will solicit proposals from the wider industry to “increase the cadence” of moon missions, a NASA spokesperson said. Blue Origin is widely expected to compete; Lockheed Martin has already convened an industry team to respond.

As expected, Musk is enraged. He didn’t need to convene anything to respond on X: “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ,” he said in response to Duffy.

Delays everywhere

To recap: The Artemis program is a multi-contractor, multibillion-dollar campaign to restore a sustained U.S. presence on the moon. Artemis III is the mission that, if it doesn’t get cancelled, will put American boots back on the surface of the moon. It is a critical step for America to remain ahead of the new space race with China, which aims to colonize the solar system in this century. Whoever gets to the moon first and establishes the first base in its south pole—where water is abundant for life and, more importantly, the cooking of new rocket fuel to launch ships to Mars and beyond—will have the advantage for the next few decades.

Artemis III was planned for 2027 with SpaceX’s Starship as the human landing system (HLS). This is how it works: Boeing’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket launches four astronauts in Lockheed Martin’s Orion to lunar orbit; SpaceX’s Starship HLS then docks with Orion and ferries astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface and back.

That last piece—the lunar Starship—is the fulcrum. NASA’s own advisers now say that the 2027 date could slip years due to SpaceX’s competing priorities. The agency has grown uneasy with SpaceX’s lack of progress on lunar-lander-specific milestones. Internally and publicly, Musk insists the company is “moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry.” But lightning alone doesn’t meet Artemis’s deadlines. Of course, nobody else in the program, including Boeing’s SLS and Lockheed Martin’s Orion, is meeting the deadlines either, but let’s discuss that later.

SpaceX’s broader Starship campaign—rapid, test‑to‑failure flights to mature a super heavy‑lift system—matters for Starlink and Mars. The lunar variant is a tougher ask. As NASA program veterans point out, the HLS Starship needs to be markedly different from the prototypes flying today, then cleared for astronaut operations—a stretch for any organization on tight timelines. Meanwhile, the White House wants the moon landing done before January 2029, adding political pressure to an already complex schedule. Artemis II—the 10‑day crewed loop around the moon that sets up Artemis III—remains “on track” for April and could even get moved to February, NASA officials have said.

Duffy seems to imply that Artemis III’s landing hinges on HLS being ready, but blaming Musk alone ignores the larger truth: The program is struggling on multiple fronts. The SLS core rocket is expendable and costs more than $4 billion per launch—an eye‑watering figure that undermines long‑term cadence like he says NASA needs.

Lockheed Martin’s Orion capsule suffered significant heat shield erosion on Artemis I’s reentry. Not even the lunar suits are ready. NASA’s Inspector General reports tally roughly $4.3 billion in SLS overages and about three years of delays. And the program’s architecture—many contractors, many interfaces, shifting priorities—is a recipe for disaster. Even former NASA administrator Mike Griffin called the Artemis program “excessively complex” with an “unrealistic” price tag.

Advantage China

While the U.S. wrangles contracts, hardware, and schedules, Beijing is seemingly executing to plan. China has already completed a full landing-and-ascent test of its crewed lunar lander, Lanyue (“embrace the moon”), a vehicle that is closer to Apollo’s lunar module than NASA’s own program.

Like Apollo’s lunar module, Lanyue’s has two sections. One has the main engine to land on the moon. The other has the habitacle, with a propulsion system to take off from the moon once the mission is done. It is designed to carry two Chinese astronauts between lunar orbit and the surface, supporting life support, power, and data for the surface stay. 

The Long March 10 heavy‑lift rocket—the equivalent to NASA’s Saturn V or its SLS—is advancing according to officials, who insist that the “overall development of crewed lunar missions is progressing smoothly.” China’s target is to put astronauts on the moon before 2030, which is actually earlier than its original projections.

The CNSA—Chinese National Space Administration—is going further and faster than NASA’s plans at this point. One shocking example: It has already deployed multiple satellites in lunar orbit to support its manned missions and its future base in the moon’s South Pole, which Beijing says will be operating in 2035. By 2050, the South China Morning Post reports, the CNSA expects to have bases in the South Pole, the lunar equator, and the far side of the moon.

And that’s worrying for the United States and its flagging space supremacy. This isn’t flag‑planting theater like in the 1960s. The South Pole’s permanently shadowed craters harbor large deposits of water ice. Ice means drinkable water, breathable oxygen, and rocket propellant—everything you need for permanent basing and a new space economy that will make trillions of dollars.

The first nation to stand up reliable access to polar ice writes the rules of that economy. Any country that wants to establish mining and manufacturing on the moon or in asteroids on Earth’s orbit, will need a strategic permanent base on our satellite. From there, you could theoretically take over the entire solar system with an ease that you would not have from Earth. This is because launching a spacecraft from the moon takes a lot fewer resources than launching from our planet, where you have to counter 10 times the gravity force.

It’s a race the U.S. can’t afford to lose and yet, each Artemis delay shifts the space race eastward. While NASA’s decision to open the Artemis III landing contract is a necessary one, it is also an admission that the current plan won’t land on schedule. In fact, Duffy himself said that it won’t fly until 2028, which NASA confirmed.

You can say that a 2028 launch still gives the U.S. two years before China’s mission but, since Artemis’s history can be measured in schedule setbacks, at this point it’s very hard to believe that the calendar-wreaking havoc is over. We are going to need a series of miracles for that to work out and we just can’t rush astronaut safety.

But the biggest problem for NASA is that, today, China is marching on with a centralized, fully state-backed, long-term program to put boots on the moon before the end of the decade, like Apollo. While NASA’s decision was a necessary one, if the U.S. wants to lead in the moon‑to‑Mars-and-beyond era, it must lock an operational lander as soon as possible, fix existing and future hardware issues in record time, and increase mission cadence. Right now—not some time later in the decade. Otherwise, the first footprints of this century’s lunar age will belong to Beijing.

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