NASA now has a detailed public plan for putting astronauts back on the Moon as soon as 2028, and it changes how the two commercial landers are supposed to work.
At a lengthy news conference, the agency walked through the architecture for its Artemis Program for the first time in this much detail. Much of the content had been reported before, but NASA acknowledged some substantial changes.
The biggest involves SpaceX. Under the revised plan, the Orion crew capsule docks with the Starship lunar lander in high-Earth orbit, then the two travel on to the Moon. That puts the crew handoff far from the lunar neighborhood, well before the long trip begins.
Blue Origin's version looks different. Its mission architecture calls for four launches of the New Glenn rocket, but no spacecraft-to-spacecraft refuelings. The plan also leaves room for the Blue Moon lander to meet Orion in low-lunar orbit, meaning the rendezvous could happen at the Moon instead.
The contrast is the useful part. Moving fuel between vehicles in orbit is widely regarded as one of the harder steps in any lunar mission, and Blue Origin's plan drops it. The cost is a launch count that NASA now puts at four for New Glenn.
For anyone tracking the 2028 target, the two routes now differ in where the crew changes ships. SpaceX's plan puts that docking in high-Earth orbit, well above the altitude of the International Space Station. Blue Origin's allows it to happen in orbit around the Moon.