Two years after awarding Elon Musk’s SpaceX a contract to ferry astronauts to the surface of the Moon, NASA on Friday announced it had chosen Blue Origin, a rival space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, to build a second lunar lander.
Two years after awarding Elon Musk’s SpaceX a contract to ferry astronauts to the surface of the Moon, NASA on Friday announced it had chosen Blue Origin, a rival space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, to build a second lunar lander.
Blue Origin’s lander was selected for the Artemis 5 mission, currently scheduled to take place in 2029. The company will first have to demonstrate it can safely land on the Moon without a crew.
Bezos, the founder and former CEO of Amazon, said on Twitter he was „honored to be on this journey with @NASA to land astronauts on the Moon—this time to stay.“
The contract amounts to $3.4 billion, but John Couluris, vice-president in charge of lunar transport at Blue Origin, said during a press conference that the company would itself contribute „well north“ of that amount to develop the craft.
The Artemis program marks NASA’s return to the Moon after more than 50 years and is made up of several missions, each with increasing complexity.
In 2021, the US agency chose SpaceX to build a lander for Artemis 3, the first mission in the series to have actual astronauts set foot on the lunar surface.
