NASA wants to land astronauts on the moon in 2028. Will SpaceX's Starship or Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander be ready in time?

With the Artemis 2 crew back home after their historic circumlunar voyage, attention now turns to getting astronauts back on the surface of the moon. But how are the landers that will make such an ambitious endeavor possible progressing? NASA recently outlined a revised plan for Artemis 3 , which has the mission performing a crewed test in Earth orbit in late 2027 rather than the previously planned 2028 lunar landing. The mission will instead be an Earth-orbit rendezvous of NASA's Orion spacecraft with one or both of the program's moon landers, analogous to the Apollo 9 mission, setting up a lunar landing attempt with Artemis 4 in late 2028. But this plan relies on swift action by NASA's partners. The agency earlier selected two private companies to provide crewed Artemis moon landers: SpaceX 's Starship Human Landing System (HLS) and Blue Origin 's Blue Moon lander, both of which are in development and facing tight deadlines for future missions. With a number of major milestones on the horizon, the coming months will indicate if these landers can be readied for their planned 2027 orbital tests. SpaceX and Starship HLS SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has long talked about getting humans to Mars , but recently he's shifted his attention to the moon , despite earlier calling our natural satellite "a distraction." Now, he's talking about a lunar settlement. First, however, SpaceX needs to get its Starship HLS lander ready. …