Bezos's Blue Origin and Musk's SpaceX to collaborate in building NASA's lunar lander

NASA has selected three private space companies to develop human landers for Artemis moon missions.

The three companies include Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX; and Dynetics, based in Huntsville, Alabama.

The contract of the three companies is collectively worth $967 million. Out of this $579 million has been allocated to Blue Origin, $135 million to SpaceX and $253 million to Dynetics respectively.

Also read: Moon rock for sale!: One of the largest lunar meteorite to be auctioned for $2.5 million

Two other companies that put in bids, Boeing and Vivace, were edged out.

The lunar landers will carry the astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface and back again.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstone said "this is the first time since the Apollo era that NASA has direct funding for a human landing system, and now we have companies on contract to do the work for the Artemis program."

The three companies are now in competition with each other to see who can develop their proposals into workable landers. 

With Artemis, NASA has promised that the first woman will step foot on the lunar surface and there's already speculation on which of the space agency's veteran female astronauts might be the one.

The landings will be the first time astronauts have walked on the moon since the Apollo moon landings of the late 60s and early 70s.