‘Raises a lot of questions’: NASA selects SpaceX to land humans on the moon after four consecutive explosions during testing

NASA on Friday announced a surprising decision to select only SpaceX to continue development of the Human Landing System (HLS) that will eventually land the next man and the first woman on the moon through the Artemis program.

The agency last year selected three prime contractors to design a HLS: Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX.

Dynetics, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Leidos, is headquartered in Huntsville, and Blue Origin’s work on the program is also being centered in the Rocket City. Of course, Marshall Space Flight Center manages the HLS program for NASA, so the program is about as Huntsville-centric as it gets.

It was widely expected that NASA would select two of the three contractors to advance in the competition in order to ensure the program stays on schedule; however, the agency decided to award SpaceX the only contract for the next phase, effectively ending the competition.

The firm-fixed price, milestone-based contract total award value is $2.89 billion, per a NASA release.

The massive award comes after “several catastrophic failures” by SpaceX, which is relatively unproven as a contractor compared to the heritage teams put together by Blue Origin and Dynetics. Blue Origin’s team, for example, featured the likes of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

Alabama rocket builder United Launch Alliance — with its 100% success record — would have been a commercial launch option for both Blue Origin’s and Dynetics’ respective HLS. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s HLS would use the company’s own SpaceX Starship as its commercial launch provider.

Starship has never been used in a mission before, and recent testing has raised more questions than answers.

Starship prototype SN8 in December performed the first high‑altitude test flight of the rocket, which ended with a hard landing that caused the prototype to blow up. If this would have been a crewed mission, everyone on board would presumably have died.

Yet, this was just the start of a string of public Starship explosions — four straight, to be exact.

SN9, SN10 and SN11 also blew up in recent weeks during unmanned test flights, leading to intense national scrutiny.

The fiery SN11 explosion even rained down debris for miles on the continental United States.

And, of course, SpaceX has had issues with different rockets blowing up over the past several years, such as the Falcon 9 — with explosions as far back as 2016 and the most recent occurring last month.

“Starship is a long way from being ready for a trip to orbit,” the New York Times recently wrote.

That reality begs the question of whether the nascent Biden administration is really committed to NASA’s Artemis Program, which was supposed to launch its first crewed mission in 2024.

Congressman Robert Aderholt (AL-04) released a statement after NASA’s announcement asking just that — and more.

“America’s space program is extremely important to me and returning Americans to the surface of the moon is a top priority,” said Aderholt, a senior member of the House Committee on Appropriations and the ranking member of its Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science — which has jurisdiction over NASA’s budget.

“NASA’s award decision today raises a lot of questions,” he stressed.

Aderholt continued, “NASA and the U.S. Air Force recently agreed to very high SpaceX prices, several times the price on the company’s web site, for a launch of Gateway elements, and for national security payloads. The years of delay in the development of the Falcon Heavy, as well as recent tests of the Starship program as reported in the news, also raise technical and scheduling questions. Given the importance of our space program to our national security, I will be asking NASA a number of questions about today’s announcement and about their management of the program.”

Sean Ross is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn