Following Artemis II, NASA Sets Sights on SpaceX and Blue Origin for Lunar Touchdowns

A NASA livestream video grab captured the moment Artemis II crewmembers, clad in orange suits, were extracted from their spacecraft after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California, on April 10, 2026.

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The NASA spacecraft, carrying four astronauts, successfully splashed down as planned on Friday off the California coast, marking the culmination of the US space agency's successful crewed test mission around the Moon, the first such flyby in more than 50 years.

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Mission commander Reid Wiseman reported that the crewmembers, including himself, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen, were "stable" and "green" after the mission.

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With Artemis II successfully completing its historic lunar mission on Friday, NASA is now relying on billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk for the next step: landing astronauts on the Moon.

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The Apollo program, which sent the first and only humans to the Moon's surface between 1969 and 1972, was designed to allow only two astronauts to land on the lunar surface for a maximum of a few days.

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More than 50 years later, American ambitions and expertise have grown, with NASA aiming to send four people on a mission lasting several weeks and eventually building a lunar base.

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For the second phase of its mission, the space agency is looking to commercial landers designed by Musk's SpaceX and Bezos's Blue Origin to get its astronauts on the Moon.

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After Artemis II splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, NASA officials urged all hands on deck for a crewed landing in 2028, with acting associate NASA administrator Lori Glaze emphasizing the need for industry collaboration.

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Glaze told a press conference, "We need all of industry to work and come along with us, and they need to accept that challenge and come with us and really start the production lines that are going to be required in order to achieve that goal."

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The Apollo program relied on a single rocket, the Saturn V, which carried both the lunar lander and the capsule carrying the astronauts, but NASA has opted for two separate systems for Artemis.

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The first system will launch the Orion spacecraft carrying the crew from Earth, and another will launch the lunar lander, which will be privately contracted.

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The decision to use separate systems was driven by the technical limitations of the Apollo program, according to Kent Chojnacki, a senior NASA official in charge of lunar lander development.

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Chojnacki explained that the Apollo program "was very not expandable to long-term exploration and long-term stays," and Jack Kiraly, director of government relations at the Planetary Society, described the Apollo missions as "camping trips."

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The systems NASA is looking at now are "huge compared to Apollo," with the new lunar landers being developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX being two to seven times larger than before.

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The space agency is also drawing from external partners, such as the European companies that built the propulsion module for Orion, which opens access to more equipment and resources but also complicates operations.

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To send these giant spacecraft to the Moon, private space exploration companies will need to master in-flight refueling, a complex maneuver that has not yet been fully tested.

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After the lunar lander is launched, additional rockets will be needed to deliver the fuel required for the journey to the Moon, some 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) from Earth.

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Given the risks and delays, particularly those experienced by SpaceX, pressure has mounted in recent months, with three former NASA officials warning in an article in SpaceNews last September that "we are once again about to lose the Moon."

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China, which is hoping to send humans to the Moon by 2030, has been making progress, raising fears in the Trump administration that the United States could get left behind.

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NASA raised the possibility last fall of reopening the contract awarded to SpaceX and using Blue Origin's lunar lander first, sending shockwaves through the rival companies, which then realigned their strategies to prioritize the lunar project.

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Concerns remain, particularly regarding the feasibility of in-orbit refueling, but Chojnacki said, "We do have a plan," and NASA has a back-up plan in case of failure.

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The timeline is also uncertain, with NASA planning to test an in-orbit rendezvous between the spacecraft and one or two lunar landers in 2027, and carry out a crewed lunar landing in 2028.

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Before that, companies will need to test in-orbit refueling and send an unmanned lunar lander to the Moon to demonstrate its safety, all of which needs to happen within the next two years.

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Clayton Swope of the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted that "it feels like a very small amount of time" to accomplish these tasks.