The new landing of the United States on the moon has been postponed for one year.
Following the promises of Donald Trump, who spoke of a new conquest of Earth’s satellite in 2024, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk competed for a $3 billion contract with NASA to build a lunar lander.
In the end, Tesla’s sponsor Space X won, but at the end of a long legal battle that delayed the project. Thus, the head of the US Space Agency, Bill Nelson, was forced to admit that a man will not set foot on the Earth of the Moon before 2025.
“Unfortunately, we lost seven months arguing,” Nelson complained, explaining how it is currently impossible to establish an exact date and that NASA needs time to resume work on the Starship project using Space X, a project that will lead to construction for use on the Artemis missions.
Bezos focused his case on the fact that Space X would not guarantee the same safety requirements as Blue Origin, arguing that in the end, NASA decided to award the contract to the highest bidder to make ends meet. All criticism has been dismissed by both Space X and the space agency.
And while December 2022 celebrates the 50th anniversary of the last time humans reached the moon on the Apollo 17 mission, Musk dreams a lot. With Project Starship, he is looking beyond the Moon, and is aiming for an even more ambitious goal: to bring humanity soon to Mars and find a “colony” on the Red Planet. In fact, the Silicon Valley visionary has repeatedly said he is convinced that this is the only way to give mankind a horizon for long-term survival.
(Unioneonline / vl)
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