Nasa picks Bezos's Blue Origin and Musk's SpaceX for new lunar landings

Nasa has selected three private space companies to lead the development of lunar landers for its forthcoming moon landings.

The three companies are Blue Origin, owned by Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos; Elon Musk’s SpaceX; and Dynetics, based in Huntsville, Alabama, The Guardian reports, citing the agency.

The lunar landers will carry the astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface and back again. Blue Origin’s contract is worth $579m, SpaceX’s $135m and Dynetics will receive $253m.

These awards will cover the next 10 months as each team works with Nasa to determine how their proposed solution would work in practice.  In the past, Nasa has specified exactly how it wants spacecraft to be built. Now, however, it is working more collaboratively with smaller aerospace companies who have developed newer, more cost-effective ways of building space hardware.