After Artemis II, NASA looks to SpaceX, Blue Origin for Moon landings

With Artemis II successfully completing its historic lunar mission on Friday (April 10, 2026), NASA is banking on billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk for the next step: landing astronauts on the Moon.

The Apollo programme -- which sent the first and only humans to the Moon's surface between 1969 and 1972 -- was designed so that only two astronauts could land on the lunar surface for a maximum of a few days.