Artemis II is NASA’s last lunar mission without Silicon Valley.

SpaceX launched its IPO on the same day that the United States sent astronauts to the moon for the first time in 54 years. And the timing is right. This will likely be the last time NASA attempts to send people into space without significant support from companies emerging from the venture-backed technology space.

The origins of NASA’s current lunar exploration campaign trace a complicated path back to the second Bush administration, which began developing a massive rocket and spacecraft called Orion to return to the moon. By 2010, the project was scaled back due to over budget and combined with a new program to help private companies build new orbital rockets.

That decision led SpaceX to sign deals that cut the company’s costs, pour venture capital into extraterrestrial technology, and develop the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that now carries three Americans and one Canadian around the moon.

SLS is the most powerful operational rocket in the world today. It has flown only once this week, when it launched an empty Orion spacecraft on a test flight around the Moon in preparation for its historic mission, which will set a record for the furthest humans have gone into the solar system.

But next time the pressure will be on SpaceX or Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The two companies are competing to see who will get their boots on the lunar regolith.

SLS and Orion were built by NASA’s existing contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin with support from Europe’s Airbus Defense and Space. It was also expensive, delayed, and over budget, and SpaceX began a cycle of massive investments in private space by flying cheap, reusable rockets.

When NASA decided to explore the Moon again in 2019, it felt it had to stick with SLS and Orion.

But there was a missing piece to the puzzle. It was a vehicle that transported astronauts from space to the lunar surface. NASA decided that this would come from the next generation of venture-backed space companies. The agency has also turned to a handful of private space companies to deploy robotic landers for reconnaissance and testing, including Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines.

SpaceX bid to use its Starship rocket as a lander and won the job in 2021. It was a controversial decision. Getting the massive vehicle to the moon would require more than a dozen launches to fill it with enough propellant for the trip. After waiting for years for a spacecraft, NASA decided to push back on its attempt to land on the moon and readjust its program.

“It’s an architecture that no NASA administrator I know would have chosen if they had had the choice,” former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told Congress last year, noting that the decision was made without the agency’s Senate-confirmed leader.

Blue Origin was added to the roster in 2023 to build its own human landing system.

Now it appears the organization is planning a bake-off. NASA will test Orion’s ability to rendezvous with one or both of its orbiting landers in 2027, ahead of two potential landings in 2028. This will add scrutiny to SpaceX’s next Starship test, which could occur this month, and Blue Origin’s plans to test a lander on the moon sometime this year.

This year saw a major overhaul of the program under new NASA Administrator and billionaire paying entrepreneur Jared Isaacman. Jared Isaacman has flown two space missions paid for by SpaceX and has been promoted by Musk as the right manager candidate. Nominated by President Donald Trump, then renominated after his nomination was withdrawn, he takes office in late 2025 and faces a series of difficult choices about how to return to the moon.

Last March, Isaacman scrapped a plan long seen by outside observers as wasteful or politically motivated to build a lunar space station called Gateway and invest in expensive upgrades to the SLS. Now he is focused on building the next generation of private space companies.

But China is on its own disciplined path to send one of its citizens to the moon by 2030, so any delays or missteps can be viewed from a geopolitical perspective. Silicon Valley has so far failed to beat Chinese companies in physical areas such as electric vehicles or robotics. SpaceX has become a company that entrepreneurs across the Pacific are trying to emulate, but the journey to the moon will give Silicon Valley an opportunity to show that it can still own the technological frontier.