NASA postpones Moon mission until 2025 due to Blue Origin lawsuit delays

The much-awaited mission to Moon carrying the first woman of colour has been pushed back to 2025 due to delays caused by litigation filed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. The Artemis mission was further pushed by factors like the COVID-19 pandemic and is very unlikely to take place earlier than 2025, CNN reported, citing NASA administrator Bill Nelson. Meanwhile, it is also anticipated that the Chinese space program is increasingly capable of setting foot on the Moon surface much earlier than expected, Nelson added.

“We’ve lost nearly seven months in litigation and that likely has pushed the first human landing likely to no earlier than 2025,” Nelson said during a televised press conference.

Nelson referred to the litigation filed by Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin stemming from the decision taken by NASA. For a recap, when NASA announced plans to return to the Moon --  both SpaceX and Blue Origin wanted to be the part space agency's plan to build the human landing system. However, owing to the cash crunch, NASA endorsed Elon Musk’s SpaceX leading to a legal tussle between NASA and Blue Origin. On Friday, the decision by the Court of Federal Claims came in favour of NASA allowing further developments in the Artemis program without any hindrance. However, during the litigation, NASA was prevented from getting in touch with SpaceX regarding the development of the human landing system. “But our teams still need time to work through the specifics,” Nelson said. Notably, lack of funding has also remained a major factor in meeting the target of the next man mission to the Moon. Meanwhile, SpaceX has continued to build the human landing system without any payouts from NASA.

Nelson also called for significant changes in fund allotment to support 10 lunar landings in the coming years, beginning from 2023. The manned-crew launch of the Artemis program will be preceded by a non-crewed test flight, which has also been pushed to February 2022, CNN reported.

'Will beat our competitors with boots on the Moon': Nelson

Emphasising the various factors that temporarily grounded the Moon mission, Nelson also raised concerns about China’s robust movements to gain new achievements in space. He added that “it is highly possible that China could land on the Moon before a return by US astronauts.” Commenting on China’s “aggressive” space program, he stated: “This has happened in the last few years that we’ve seen them achieve quite a number of things." He further referred to China’s claims of landing on the south pole of the Moon and asserted that the United States government wished to be the first to send astronauts back to the Moon after over half a century. “We are going to be as aggressive as we can be in a safe and technically feasible way to beat our competitors with boots on the Moon,” CNN quoted Nelson as saying at the televised presser.  

(Image: AP/@NASA_Twitter)