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SpaceX Starship Human landing system (HLS)

NASA was getting ready to send astronauts to explore more of the Moon as part of the Artemis program, and the agency selected SpaceX to continue development of the first commercial human lander that would safely carry the next two American astronauts to the lunar surface. At least one of those astronauts would make history as the first woman on the Moon. Another goal of the Artemis program includes landing the first person of color on the lunar surface.

The agency’s powerful Space Launch System rocket would launch four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft for their multi-day journey to lunar orbit. There, two crew members would transfer to the SpaceX Human landing system (HLS) for the final leg of their journey to the surface of the Moon. After approximately a week exploring the surface, they would board the lander for their short trip back to orbit where they would return to Orion and their colleagues before heading back to Earth.

The firm-fixed price, milestone-based contract total award value is $2.89 billion. "With this award, NASA and our partners would complete the first crewed demonstration mission to the surface of the Moon in the 21st century as the agency takes a step forward for women’s equality and long-term deep space exploration,” said Kathy Lueders, NASA's associate administrator for Human Explorations and Operations Mission Directorate. “This critical step puts humanity on a path to sustainable lunar exploration and keeps our eyes on missions farther into the solar system, including Mars.”

The Source Selection Official veered from the Agency’s oft-stated procurement strategy. Instead of investing in two competing lunar landers as originally intended, the Agency chose to confer a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar head start to SpaceX. That decision broke the mold of NASA’s successful commercial space programs by putting an end to meaningful competition for years to come. It also eliminated the benefits of utilizing the broad and capable supply base of the National Team (as opposed to funding the vertically-integrated SpaceX approach) and locks every trip to the Moon into 10+ Super Heavy/Starship launches just to get a single lander to the surface. By the Agency’s own admission, it bets our return to the Moon on a single solution of “immense complexity and heightened risk associated with the very high number of events necessary to execute the front end [with] risk of operational schedule delays.”

SpaceX has been working closely with NASA experts during the HLS base period of performance to inform its lander design and ensure it meets NASA’s performance requirements and human spaceflight standards. A key tenet for safe systems, these agreed-upon standards range from areas of engineering, safety, health, and medical technical areas.

“This is an exciting time for NASA and especially the Artemis team,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan, program manager for HLS at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “During the Apollo program, we proved that it is possible to do the seemingly impossible: land humans on the Moon. By taking a collaborative approach in working with industry while leveraging NASA’s proven technical expertise and capabilities, we would return American astronauts to the Moon’s surface once again, this time to explore new areas for longer periods of time.”

SpaceX’s HLS Starship, designed to land on the Moon, leaned on the company’s tested Raptor engines and flight heritage of the Falcon and Dragon vehicles. Starship includes a spacious cabin and two airlocks for astronaut moonwalks. The Starship architecture is intended to evolve to a fully reusable launch and landing system designed for travel to the Moon, Mars, and other destinations.

Kathy Lueders, NASA's Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations, served as the Source Selection Authority who led the team that reviewed the three HLS proposals and made the conditional selection of SpaceX's proposal on April 2, 2021. The formal award was announced on April 16, 2021, for $2.89 billion.

Just a couple of weeks after retiring from NASA in April 2023, Lueders joined SpaceX in May 2023 as a general manager working on the Starship program at Starbase, reporting directly to SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell. As a NASA official, Lueders also selected Starship for a second contract worth $1.15 billion for Artemis IV in 2022.

This represents a classic "revolving door" case where the official who held final decision-making authority for awarding SpaceX the most valuable NASA contract in the HLS program subsequently went to work for SpaceX on the very same Starship program she had approved.

William Gerstenmaier, who served as NASA's Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations from 2005 to 2019, was was reassigned from his role as Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations in July 2019 to a "special advisor" position, which is typically considered a demotion. No reason was given for the reassignment. He joined SpaceX in February 2020 as a consultant after four decades with NASA, eventually becoming Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability. Since he joined SpaceX nearly a year before the April 2021 HLS contract award, he was not directly involved in the selection decision that chose SpaceX. He now served as SpaceX's Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability.

The Lueders case was particularly significant because she was the final decision-maker on the HLS contract selection and then joined the company working specifically on the program she had awarded, raising questions about whether the prospect of future employment may have influenced the procurement decision.

While it's noted that the federal government has restrictions on civil servants when they move to the private sector, there were no reports of any formal ethics reviews or investigations related to either of their hirings. Their moves appear to have followed standard retirement-to-private-sector transitions that are common in the aerospace industry.