Legal dispute with Jeff Bezos: Nasa postpones planned moon landing

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With this rocket, NASA wants to send the Artemis crew on a moon mission (archive image)

Photo: HANDOUT / AFP

The return of US astronauts to the moon, originally planned for 2024, has been delayed by at least a year.

The moon landing in the course of the Artemis mission will "not take place before 2025," said the head of the US space agency Nasa, Bill Nelson, on Tuesday.

Nelson cited the legal dispute with the private space company Blue Origin of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as one of the reasons for the delay.

Blue Origin had sued against a NASA contract to build a lunar module to rival SpaceX from Tesla founder Elon Musk.

The lawsuit was finally dismissed by a federal court last week.

"We lost nearly seven months litigation," Nelson said.

"Therefore, the first human landing (on the moon since 1972) will probably not be postponed until 2025."

Former US President Donald Trump had declared the goal of US astronauts returning to the moon in 2024.

However, the Artemis program was repeatedly delayed as a result.

Last manned moon landing in 1972

With the Artemis 1 mission, according to current plans, a spaceship is to be launched in February as a test flight to the moon.

With Artemis 2, astronauts are supposed to orbit the moon in 2024 before astronauts with Artemis 3 are supposed to land on the earth's satellite.

Astronauts last landed on the moon in 1972 with the Apollo 17 mission.

NASA announced in September that it would split its manned space division into two separate units - one with large, future-oriented missions to the moon and Mars, the other with the International Space Station and other low-earth operations.

sol / afp / Reuters