The United States may lose the race to land on the moon to China and fail to land on the moon in 2027, as Washington plans. The possible failure is due to missed deadlines by Elon Musk's SpaceX company, The New York Times reports.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the super-heavy Space Launch System rocket will deliver the Orion spacecraft, carrying astronauts, into lunar orbit in 2027. The moon landing will be carried out using SpaceX's Starship. Former NASA officials have admitted in interviews with the newspaper that such a multi-stage landing plan is too complex, with the riskiest part of the project being SpaceX's responsibility.
NASA officials are privately discussing the possible postponement of the Artemis III mission to 2028, and some suggest that Starship will not be ready to land until 2032, according to The New York Times. They explain that SpaceX is dealing with "the largest number of unproven technologies" that directly affect the success of the mission. "I doubt it can be done by 2030. And that means China will probably beat us to the moon," senior NASA official Daniel Dumbacher told the newspaper.
Transportation Secretary and acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy told the newspaper that he still supports SpaceX's participation in the US lunar program. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, however, reacted sharply. "The New York Times is not even suitable for a parrot cage mat, let alone for reading," he commented on the newspaper's article in X.
In the spring of 2019, NASA announced the Artemis lunar program, consisting of three phases. The first (Artemis I) envisaged an unmanned flight of the Orion spacecraft around the Moon and its return to Earth. The flight took place from November 16 to December 11, 2022. The second phase (Artemis II) involved a manned orbital flight of the spacecraft around the Earth's natural satellite. In the third phase (Artemis III), NASA hopes to land astronauts on the Moon.