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Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos ahead of rocket launch in West Texas
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BLUE ORIGIN HANDOUT / EPA
A team led by Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin has won a coveted NASA contract to build a lunar module. This enables the US space agency to make a second flight to the moon: In 2021, SpaceX received an initial order worth three billion dollars from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. At the time, Bezos had drawn the short straw and unsuccessfully sued against the tender.
The NASA announcement in Washington was a long-awaited victory for Blue Origin, which had unsuccessfully applied for government contracts in the past. The space company prevailed over a competing bid from defense company Dynetics Inc.
Moon landing before the end of this decade
As part of the so-called Artemis program, astronauts are to land on the moon for the first time since the Apollo mission in 1972. The first missions with SpaceX's Starship system are planned later this decade.
The contract with Blue Origin is worth about $3.4 billion, said NASA executive Jim Free, with the company contributing "far more" than that amount, according to its own statement. We're honored to be on this journey with NASA and to land astronauts on the moon — this time we're staying," Amazon billionaire Bezos wrote in a tweet following the announcement.
Bezos has invested billions in the company since Blue Origin was founded in 2000 to compete against SpaceX in lucrative, commercial and government space contracts.
Blue Origin plans to build its 16-meter-tall Blue Moon lander in a partnership with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, space software company Draper and robotics company Astorobotic. The landing, scheduled for 2029, will bring two astronauts to the lunar surface.
rai/Reuters