NASA Selects Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin for Second Lunar Lander Contract

Two years after awarding Elon Musk’s SpaceX a contract to ferry astronauts to the floor of the Moon, NASA on Friday introduced it had chosen Blue Origin, a rival house firm based by billionaire Jeff Bezos, to construct a second lunar lander.

Blue Origin’s lander was chosen for the Artemis 5 mission, at the moment scheduled to happen in 2029. The firm will first need to display it may safely land on the Moon with out a crew.

Bezos, the founder and former CEO of Amazon, mentioned on Twitter he was “honored to be on this journey with @NASA to land astronauts on the Moon — this time to remain.”

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 quantity to develop the craft.

The Artemis program marks NASA’s return to the Moon after greater than 50 years and is made up of a number of missions, every with growing complexity.

In 2021, the US company selected SpaceX to construct a lander for Artemis 3, the primary mission within the sequence to have precise astronauts set foot on the lunar floor.

The contract was price $2.9 billion, though SpaceX is supplementing that quantity with its personal funding.

Blue Origin had additionally competed for the primary contract, and filed an unsuccessful lawsuit in opposition to NASA when SpaceX was chosen as the only lander supplier.

The house company had initially supposed to supply two contracts, a apply generally used to protect in opposition to the chance one fails, however mentioned it had been constrained by funds considerations.

NASA in 2022 additionally selected the SpaceX lander for its Artemis 4 mission, however on the similar time requested submissions from different firms for the remainder of this system.

“We need extra competitors. We need two landers,” NASA boss Bill Nelson said on Friday. “It means that you have reliability. You have backups.”

Blue Origin’s lander, dubbed Blue Moon, is being developed with a number of associate firms, together with Lockheed Martin, Draper, Boeing, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics.

(This story has not been edited by News18 employees and is printed from a syndicated news company feed – AFP)