Duffy to Open Up Artemis HLS Contract to Ensure U.S. Beats China Back to the Moon

Duffy to Open Up Artemis HLS Contract to Ensure U.S. Beats China Back to the Moon

By Marcia Smith | Posted: October 20, 2025 5:36 pm ET | Last Updated: October 20, 2025 7:55 pm ET

In interviews on Fox News and CNBC today, Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said he is opening up the contract for a Human Landing System (HLS) to get Americans back on the Moon before China gets there — and before the end of President Trump’s term. SpaceX has the contract to put the first U.S. crew back on the Moon on Artemis III using an HLS version of Starship, but they are behind schedule. Duffy wants competition and innovation from Blue Origin and other U.S. companies to make sure the U.S. meets the goal. Blue Origin already has a contract with NASA to build a second HLS, Blue Moon MK 2, but its first flight is not planned until Artemis V around 2030. NASA said this afternoon SpaceX and Blue Origin may submit “acceleration approaches” by October 29 and other companies will be able to respond to a Request for Information.

NASA posted five clips of Duffy’s appearances on the two news channels on X.  The bottom line is that he will open up the HLS contract to competition, naming Blue Origin as one potential competitor but leaving it open to “other great American companies.”

He also acknowledged publicly for the first time that Artemis III will not launch in mid-2027, the most recent target. After reasserting that Artemis II could launch as early as February 2026, which the agency has been saying since May, Duffy added that Artemis III will launch “a couple of years after that,” but before Trump leaves office in January 2029. Artemis II is a test flight that will send four astronauts around the Moon, but not land.

In a statement this afternoon, NASA explained that SpaceX and Blue Origin may submit approaches for accelerating their landers by next Wednesday, October 29, and a Request for Information (RFI) will be opened for any other interested companies.

“President Trump and Secretary Duffy have a mission to beat China back to the Moon. That’s why they are harnessing the power of the American space industry and seeking solutions to develop more ways to land on the Moon.

“NASA’s Human Landing System program has given both SpaceX and Blue Origin the opportunity to present acceleration approaches by October 29.

“NASA is also going to request plans from the entire commercial space industry – through an RFI – for how NASA can increase the cadence of our mission to the Moon.” — NASA

A Blue Origin spokesperson told SpacePolicyOnline.com in response to Duffy’s comments that “Blue Origin is ready to support,” without further elaboration.

Former NASA astronaut Bob Behnken, now Vice President of Exploration and Technology Strategy for Lockheed Martin Space, told SpacePolicyOnline.com that the company has been analyzing HLS options with a cross-industry team all year and looks forward to addressing Duffy’s request.

“Throughout this year, Lockheed Martin has been performing significant technical and programmatic analysis for human lunar landers that would provide options to NASA for a safe solution to return humans to the Moon as quickly as possible. We have been working with a cross-industry team of companies and together we are looking forward to addressing Secretary Duffy’s request to meet our country’s lunar objectives.” — Bob Behnken, Lockheed Martin Space

Behnken is half of the “Bob and Doug” team that flew the first crewed mission of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to the International Space Station in 2020. He retired from NASA two years later.

Boeing is the prime contractor for the SLS rocket and said it is focused on delivering those elements of the Artemis program.

“Boeing is honored to be part of the Artemis mission and focused on meeting NASA’s schedules and objectives by delivering the Core Stages for Artemis III and IV and the Exploration Upper Stage. Human space exploration is a cooperative endeavor, and we’ve met with several other partners across industry to share our expertise and collaborate on hardware and solutions to bring the U.S. back to the moon.” — Boeing spokesperson

In a reply to one of Duffy’s posts, Elon Musk said SpaceX is “moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry” and “Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words.”

In March 2019 during his first term, the Trump Administration set the goal of landing Americans back on the Moon by 2024, which he anticipated would be the end of his second term in office. Few believed it was possible to meet that target, but NASA proceeded as directed, embracing Public-Private Partnerships as a key acquisition strategy to move fast. NASA already had a rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), and crew spacecraft, Orion, in development, but they could get astronauts only as far as lunar orbit. NASA needed a landing system to get the astronauts from lunar orbit down to and back from the surface and wanted to procure two systems to provide “dissimilar redundancy.”  Supportive of the goal, but skeptical of the timeline, Congress provided enough money for only one.

President Biden retained the 2024 deadline when he took office in January 2021, however. In April 2021, at a time when NASA did not have a Senate-confirmed Administrator, the agency awarded one fixed-price contract to the lowest bidder, SpaceX, for $2.9 billion. Its two competitors, Blue Origin and Dynetics, protested the award to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), but lost. Blue Origin then sued in federal court and lost again. Those protests delayed work on SpaceX’s contract for seven months.

Illustration of SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) on the Moon. Note the astronauts at the base of the lander for scale. Credit: SpaceX

By November 2021, new NASA Administrator Bill Nelson conceded 2024 was not realistic. HLS development was only one factor. Just about every element of the Artemis program was delayed and the date for landing a crew on the Moon — the first time HLS is needed — slipped to mid-2027 by the end of the Biden Administration.

NASA still wanted two dissimilar, redundant HLS systems. In 2023, it gave SpaceX a second HLS contract for Artemis IV and Blue Origin a contract for Artemis V, the third landing mission, using its Blue Moon MK 2 (MK 1 is a small, uncrewed lander Blue Origin is getting ready to launch as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative). The plan was to alternate between the two companies for one NASA lunar landing mission per year thereafter as the agency and its international and commercial partners began a program of sustained lunar exploration and utilization. Like Starship, Blue Moon MK 2 needs in-space refueling, in lunar orbit instead of Earth orbit.

Illustration of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK 2 lunar lander. Credit: Blue Origin

NASA once again is without a Senate-confirmed Administrator as the “space race with China” heats up. China plans to land taikonauts on the Moon by 2030 and the Trump Administration is determined to get Americans back there before that. Six U.S. Apollo crews landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972, but none since then. Artemis is Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, hence the name of today’s program.

Duffy is Secretary of Transportation and took on the additional role of Acting NASA Administrator in July. As in 2021, an Acting Administrator is making a highly consequential Artemis HLS decision. The intent clearly is to do whatever is necessary to maximize the chances of getting Americans on the Moon by the end of Trump’s term on January 20, 2029 and before China.

SpaceX’s Starship is essential to accomplish that. It’s had several successes in the 11 test flights so far, including the two most recent, IFT-10 and IFT-11. But there also have been spectacular failures like IFT-7 and IFT-8 that exploded over the Caribbean. IFT-9 was another failure.

All those test flights are suborbital. Starship has not reached Earth orbit yet. Once it does, it cannot go further out into space unless it refuels in orbit at a fuel depot that does not yet exist. Transferring cryogenic propellants in microgravity also has not yet been demonstrated and the number of Starship launches from Earth needed to refill the orbiting fuel depot to compensate for boiloff and fill the one Starship HLS that will travel to the Moon is unknown. Estimates start at “10-ish.”

In September, NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel concluded Starship HLS could be “years late.”

All that is adding to Duffy’s concern that Starship won’t be ready to safely take NASA astronauts down to and back from the lunar surface by January 2029. Under the current contract Starship must make an uncrewed test landing at the Moon’s heavily-cratered South Pole — NASA’s chosen destination for Artemis missions — and lift off, but does not have to get back into lunar orbit. Whether that requirement will be added to any new contract with SpaceX or others remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Duffy also posted today about Artemis II’s progress. The SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft are being “stacked” together at Kennedy Space Center right now. The Artemis II crew named their capsule “Integrity” and it was attached to the rocket over the weekend.


NASA employees and contractors working on Artemis are “excepted” from the government shutdown and continue working, albeit without paychecks.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that Duffy and Jared Isaacman are “jockeying” to lead NASA on a permanent basis, with Duffy proposing to merge NASA into the Department of Transportation. Duffy became Acting NASA Administrator after President Trump withdrew Isaacman’s nomination on May 31 after a falling out with Musk, who recommended Isaacman. NASA confirmed to SpacePolicyOnline.com last week that Duffy has been interviewing candidates, including Isaacman, to be the permanent Administrator, but the WSJ is first to report that Duffy actually wants to keep the job himself.

This article has been updated.

Last Updated: Oct 20, 2025 7:55 pm ET

User Comments



SpacePolicyOnline.com has the right (but not the obligation) to monitor the comments and to remove any materials it deems inappropriate.  We do not post comments that include links to other websites since we have no control over that content nor can we verify the security of such links.

SPACEPOLICYONLINE.COM

About | Contact | Privacy