NASA Picks Blue Origin-Led Group to Build Moon Lander for Artemis V Mission

On the second attempt, Jeff Bezos and his rocket firm have gained a contract to take NASA astronauts to the floor of the moon.

NASA introduced on Friday that it had awarded a contract to Mr. Bezos’ firm, Blue Origin, to offer its Blue Moon lander for a lunar mission that’s at the moment scheduled to launch in 2029.

The mission, Artemis V, is one other key piece of NASA’s Artemis program, which is to ship astronauts again to the moon as a part of an effort to discover the south pole area. Astronauts are to land on the moon in a automobile constructed by SpaceX for the Artemis III and IV missions.

”We need extra competitors,” Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, throughout the occasion on Friday at NASA headquarters in Washington on Friday. “It means that you have reliability. You have backups.”

NASA pays $3.4 billion to Blue Origin, and John Couluris, Blue Origin’s vice chairman for lunar transportation, stated the corporate was contributing “well north” of that quantity to the event effort.

The profitable of the contract might begin a promising rebound yr for Blue Origin after quite a few delays and setbacks. That consists of the failure of considered one of its New Shepard automobiles, which journey to house however to not orbit, throughout a launch final September that carried experiments however no passengers. Blue Origin has recognized the trigger and hopes to renew New Shepard flights involving each house vacationers and scientific cargo later this yr.

And some {hardware} manufactured by Blue Origin would possibly lastly be used on an orbital mission within the coming months. The firm constructed engines for the booster stage of the Vulcan rocket being developed by the United Launch Alliance, a three way partnership of the aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Blue Origin may also present some public glimpses of New Glenn, a a lot bigger rocket that’s to launch payloads to orbit.

For the lunar lander contract, Blue Origin, collaborating with different aerospace corporations together with Boeing and Lockheed Martin, beat a second group led by Dynetics, a protection firm primarily based in Huntsville, Ala. Dynetics, a subsidiary of Leidos of Reston, Va., had enlisted the assistance of the aerospace contractor Northrop Grumman for its bid.

Blue Origin and Dynetics had been upset losers in 2021 when NASA awarded a $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX to construct a variation of its big Starship automobile that will land astronauts on the moon for the primary time in additional than half a century.

The two corporations protested the choice, particularly as a result of NASA officers initially aimed to award two contracts.

That would have paralleled profitable efforts by NASA that turned over to personal corporations the transportation of cargo and crew to the International Space Station. Competition helps drive prices down and gives redundancy if one thing goes flawed, company officers have stated.

But in giving only one award to SpaceX, NASA officers stated there was not sufficient cash of their funds for a second lander. SpaceX’s $2.9 billion bid was the bottom bid by far. Blue Origin’s proposed design had a price ticket of $6 billion, and the one supplied by Dynetics was much more costly.

The federal Government Accountability Office rejected the protests of the 2 corporations. Blue Origin then sued in federal court docket and once more misplaced.

Last yr, after profitable a bigger funds from Congress, NASA introduced a contest for a second lunar lander. Dynetics and Blue Origin determined to compete once more, though there was some shuffling of the businesses taking part within the efforts. Northrop Grumman, which was a part of Blue Origin’s unique proposal, switched to the Dynetics group.

Blue Origin added to its group Boeing; Astrobotic, a small Pittsburgh firm that’s growing robotic lunar landers; and Honeybee Robotics, an area know-how firm that Blue Origin purchased final yr.

The Blue Origin lander, which is designed to take two astronauts to the moon’s south pole area, is not going to get to the moon for fairly some time.

SpaceX’s preliminary $2.9 billion contract was to offer the lander for the primary moon touchdown throughout Artemis III, which is at the moment scheduled for late 2025 however is more likely to slip to 2026 or later. In November, NASA exercised a $1.15 billion possibility in that contract for SpaceX to offer a lander for Artemis IV as properly, a mission that’s scheduled for 2028.