Astronauts will play orbital tag with SpaceX and Blue Origin landers
A high-stakes game of space tag as NASA prepares for a 2028 moon landing.
The story
NASA confirms SpaceX and Blue Origin will test lunar landers in Earth orbit next year, with a focus on docking and preparing for a 2028 moon landing.
Source: fortune.com
Our reading
NASA’s latest space plan has a new twist: it’s not just a race to the moon, but a race to see who can make the most complicated docking sequence look easy. The agency is sending astronauts to meet two different lunar landers in orbit, one from SpaceX and one from Blue Origin, and the whole thing is being framed as a ‘new space race.’ But what’s really happening is a high-stakes game of orbital tag, where the real winners will be the engineers who can make sure the landers don’t just float past each other like confused space jellyfish. The astronauts, meanwhile, will be the human equivalent of a GPS navigating a maze—just with more oxygen and fewer directions. And if this all sounds a little too much like a corporate training exercise, that’s because it kind of is. The real prize isn’t the moon; it’s the bragging rights for the company whose lander doesn’t crash into the other one.
