NASA awarded Elon Musk's SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to return astronauts to the moon in as few as three years, the U.S. space agency announced Friday.
SpaceX beat Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Dynetics, a defense contractor based in Huntsville, Alabama.
According to documents obtained by The Washington Post, Space X's bid "was the lowest among the offerors by a wide margin."
Originally, NASA had planned to award each company a fraction of the $2.9 billion contact, two of which were said to build the lunar lander.
The announcement comes as part of NASA's Artemis program, whic began under former President Donald Trump with the stated goal of landing people on the moon by 2024.
With a greater reliance on the private sector, the program is vastly different from the last time NASA put men on the moon in December 1972 during the Apollo program.
The Biden administration has chosen to continue the moon mission, although it has not committed to the timeline. It has proposed "$24.7 billion for NASA, a $1.5 billion or 6.3-percent increase from the 2021 enacted level," according to NASA documents.
SpaceX has included in its proposal its reusable two-stage heavy payload Starship rocket. The contract is the latest achievement for Musk's SpaceX, which has been used to return astronauts to the International Space Station aboard its Falcon 9 rocket.
Musk also has been vocal about predictions and goals of becoming the first to land humans on Mars.
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