Elon Musk and SpaceX Announce Return to Moon – PJ Media

Excitement has been building all afternoon about an announcement by Elon Musk and SpaceX, and the story is finally out: two private citizens have contracted with SpaceX to be the first humans to make a deep-space trip in 45 years. The mission will be the second crewed use of the SpaceX Dragon Crew vehicle, following two tests to the ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program -- an un-crewed test later this year, followed by taking a crew early in 2018.

SpaceX already has a contract with NASA for three cargo and one crewed mission a year.

Unlike the NASA missions, this lunar circumnavigation will use SpaceX's Falcon 9 Heavy booster, which SpaceX developed privately. It will be launched from Pad 39A, the same pad used by the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions.

This announcement seems to steal a march on NASA and the acting head of NASA, Robert Lightfoot. On February 15, Lightfoot announced a study to determine whether the first test of the Orion and Space Launch System could be used to send two people to the Moon:

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Elon Musk and SpaceX Announce Return to Moon - PJ Media