Elon Musk's SpaceX beats Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin to Nasa contract to put astronauts on the Moon

Nasa awarded billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to create a spacecraft to bring astronauts to the moon by as soon as 2024, the agency said on Friday, picking it over Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and defence contractor Dynetics.

Mr Bezos and Mr Musk - the world’s richest and second-richest people respectively, according to Forbes - were competing to lead humankind’s go back to the Moon for the first time since 1972.

Mr Musk’s SpaceX bid alone while Amazon.com founder Bezos’s Blue Origin partnered with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. Dynetics is a subsidiary of Leidos Holdings.

“Nasa Rules!!” Mr Musk wrote on Twitter following the announcement.

The US space agency awarded the contract for the first commercial human lander, part of its Artemis programme. Nasa said the lander would carry two American astronauts to the lunar surface.

“We should accomplish another landing as quickly as possible,” Steve Jurczyk, Nasa’s acting administrator, said.

“If indeed they hit their milestones, we've a shot at 2024,” Mr Jurczyk said.

Nasa said SpaceX’s Starship includes a spacious cabin and two airlocks for astronaut moon walks and that it might be adapted to becomea fully reusable launch and landing system designed for happen to be the Moon, Mars and other destinations in space.

“We are humbled to greatly help @NASAArtemis usher in a new era of human space exploration,” SpaceX wrote on Twitter.

Unlike the Apollo landings from 1969 to 1972 - the only human visits to the Moon’s surface - Nasa is gearing up for a longer-term lunar presence that it envisions as a stepping stone to sending astronauts to Mars. Nasa is leaning heavily on private companies built around shared visions for space exploration.

SpaceX will be asked to make a test flight of the lander to the Moon before humans make the journey, a Nasa official, Lisa Watson-Morgan, said.

Nasa had been likely to narrow the lunar lander contest to two companies by the finish of April, but instead it picked SpaceX, a move that deepens their co-operation. On Thursday, Nasa said it would send its crew to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocket on April 22.

The agency aims to create regular service to the Moon and said it will have another competition for that contract.

“We have to manage to give recurring lunar services,” said Mark Kirasich, deputy associate administrator for Nasa’s Advanced Exploration Systems division.

The announcement added to a fantastic run for Musk, who has turned electric car maker Tesla into the world’s most effective car maker, with a market capitalisation of $702bn.

Mr Musk has become a one-person technology conglomerate, launching or controlling companies pursuing space flight, electric cars, neural implants and subterranean tunnel boring.

A factor in the decision of SpaceX was “what’s the very best value to the government”, said Kathy Lueders, associate administrator for Nasa’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

Nasa said in a news release that SpaceX’s HLS Starship, designed to land on the moon, "leans on the company’s tested Raptor engines and flight heritage of the Falcon and Dragon vehicles”.

Nasa’s decision was a setback for Mr Bezos, a lifelong space enthusiast who's now more focused on his space venture after having announced in February he'd step down as Amazon leader.

The contract was seen by Mr Bezos and other executives as essential to Blue Origin establishing itself as a desired partner for Nasa, and in addition putting the venture on the road to turning a profit.

Mr Musk has outlined an ambitious agenda for SpaceX and its own reusable rockets, including kinds that can take human to land on Mars. However in the near term, SpaceX’s main business has been launching satellites for Musk’s Starlink internet venture, and other satellites and space cargo. SpaceX said on Wednesday it had raised about $1.16bn in equity financing.

An uncrewed SpaceX Starship prototype rocket didn't land safely on March 30 after a test launch from Boca Chica, Texas. The Starship was one in a number of prototypes for the heavy-lift rocket being developed by SpaceX to transport humans and 100 tonnes of cargo on future missions to the moon and Mars. An initial orbital Starship flight is planned for year’s end.