Nasa has issued a request for US companies to propose lander concepts capable of ferrying astronauts between lunar orbit and the lunar surface. The organisation awarded the role to SpaceX in April 2021 but stated on 23 March 2022 that competition would be “critical to our success on the lunar surface and beyond”.

Successful entrants would have the opportunity to engineer a lander for missions beyond Artemis III, which will land the first humans on the Moon in more than half a century.

A Nasa spokesperson added, “To bring a second entrant to market for the development of a lunar lander in parallel with SpaceX, Nasa will issue a draft solicitation in the coming weeks. This upcoming activity will lay out requirements for a future development and demonstration lunar landing capability to take astronauts between orbit and the surface of the Moon. This effort is meant to maximise Nasa’s support for competition and provides redundancy in services to help ensure Nasa’s ability to transport astronauts to the lunar surface.

“This upcoming second contract award, known as the Sustaining Lunar Development contract, combined with the second option under SpaceX’s original landing award, will pave the way to future recurring lunar transportation services for astronauts at the Moon.”

The upshot of this is that Nasa intends to have two companies capable of carrying astronauts to the Moon as early as 2026/27.