NASA announces plans to develop second Moon lander, alongside SpaceXs Starship

Today, NASA announced plans to develop a second human lunar lander for its Artemis program, the agency’s major spaceflight initiative to send humans back to the Moon. To build the vehicle, the space agency is calling on commercial space companies to propose concepts for landers that can take people to and from the Moon’s orbit and the lunar surface, with the goal of having them ready by 2026 or 2027 at the earliest.

NASA already holds a contract with commercial partner SpaceX to develop a lunar lander for Artemis, which aims to land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon. In 2021, the space agency awarded a sole contract to SpaceX worth $2.9 billion to develop the company’s future Starship vehicle into a lander that...

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