Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin in space race for Nasa's next moon mission

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos's moon landers could be pitted against each other in a 400km-high "job interview" to see which one performs best.

Both Musk's SpaceX and Bezos's Blue Origin companies are working on systems that can take astronauts to and from the lunar surface and after Nasa changed its schedule for the upcoming Artemis missions, the two will be in direct competition.

In February, Nasa announced the Artemis III mission would no longer land on the moon as previously planned.

Instead, the mission will practise docking the Orion crew capsule, which carries the astronauts into space, with the landers, which will then ferry them to the moon.

The space agency has confirmed "one or both" of the landers will be involved in the mission next year, meaning both spacecraft could be in orbit at the same time, vying to be picked for the Artemis IV moon landing in 2028.

SpaceX's giant Starship Human Landing System (HLS) was originally selected for the first Artemis moon landing, but ongoing delays prompted Nasa to open the contract to bids to other companies last year.

Blue Origin, which had already been contracted for later human missions, could now beat SpaceX to the first Artemis moon landing.

This week, Blue Origin posted footage of its Blue Moon lander Edurance coming out of a thermal vacuum chamber after successfully completing tests.

David Limp, the chief executive of Blue Origin, said the successful test brought the company "one step closer to the moon".

SpaceX has also been making progress on the Starship HLS and recently completed fuel leak testing at its Spacebase site in Boca Chica, Texas.

Nasa said both systems were making progress towards a trial docking with the Orion crew capsule in the Artemis III mission, which they said would "put the landers through their paces". The mission is scheduled for mid-2027.

Amit Kshatriya, Nasa's associate administrator, said: "There's a Blue Origin lander that just came out of the chamber and that's getting shipped to Florida.

"I know the folks in Boca Chica are getting the block three Starship ready to roll. They're going to do static fires here shortly in April and hopefully get off relatively soon.

"So we're in earnest and proceeding as quickly as we can."

Blue Moon looks like a larger, elongated version of the Apollo lander

The systems are vastly different. Starship is a massive, fully reusable, methane and oxygen-fuelled lander, which lands vertically and ferries the astronauts to the ground using a space elevator.

It is launched on a SpaceX super heavy booster rocket and will be refuelled in space before journeying to the moon.

Although it will be carrying just four crew members to the lunar surface for Artemis, it could potentially carry up to 100 astronauts on future moon or Mars missions, as well as up to 200 tons of payload capacity.

In contrast, Blue Moon looks like a larger, elongated version of the Apollo lander. It is fuelled by liquid hydrogen and oxygen and is launched on a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket. It can carry four astronauts and about 30 tons of cargo.

Artemis III will include rendezvous and docking, in-space tests of the landing vehicles, as well as checks of the life support, communications, propulsion systems and the new extravehicular activity astronaut suits for space walks.

Whichever company is successful, will be chosen to carry astronauts on the Artemis IV mission in early 2028 - the first moon landing since 1972.

Nasa told The Telegraph that a second crewed landing later that year - Artemis V - could be provided by the company which is not selected for the first mission.

During those missions, the chosen lander will dock with the Orion crew capsule in lunar orbit and take the astronauts to the moon's surface, where they will collect samples, perform science experiments and observe the environment.

The lander will launch them back to Orion, which will return them to Earth.

Blue Origin is planning to launch a Blue Moon pathfinder mission this year to test its engines, communications, propulsion and life support systems.