Austin, Texas (CNN Business) SpaceX secured a $2.89 billion NASA contract to build spacecraft that will land astronauts on the moon for the first time in five decades. The fixed-price contract is a major vote of confidence for Elon Musk's rocket company, as the space agency is placing a large amount of responsibility for its cornerstone human spaceflight program, known as Artemis, on SpaceX. is a blow to Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, which had proposed working as a "National Team" alongside corporate behemoths such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to design and build a lunar lander, and to Alabama-based Dynetics, which had put in its own bid. Test flights of early Starship prototypes have all ended in explosions thus far, but the company is rapidly building new test vehicles. Last year, NASA announced three different contracts for lunar lander development, which were awarded to SpaceX and Blue Origin's "National Team," with the expectation that the companies would each work to bring operational vehicles to fruition and compete with each other on price and technology.

Source: CNN April 16, 2021 20:48 UTC