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NASA administrator Bill Nelson has confirmed today the US space agency is no longer on track to land humans on the Moon in the next three years.
Under a directive issued by the previous White House administration, NASA was instructed to send humans to the lunar south pole by no later than 2024.
However, NASA’s programme has been bogged down by delays and litigation, causing a significant delay to the effort.
Mr Nelson said on Tuesday: “We lost nearly seven months in litigation and that likely has pushed the first human landing to no earlier than 2025.”
Humans have not walked on the surface of the Moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
The US space agency has been taken to court by Jeff Bezos’s aerospace company Blue Origin over a £2.14billion ($2.9billion) lunar lander contract awarded to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The US Court of Federal Claims ruled against Blue Origin last week, putting an end to a months-long legal battle.
Earlier this summer, Blue Origin’s lawyers accused NASA of conducting “unlawful and improper evaluation of proposals”.
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