The lunar lander has been selected for the Artemis 5 mission, which is scheduled to take place in 2029. It will first have to demonstrate its safety by making a landing on the Moon without a crew.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, said Friday on Twitter "honored to be part of this trip with NASA to land astronauts on the moon."
The contract is worth $3.4 billion, but John Couluris, vice president of lunar transportation at Blue Origin, said at a news conference that the company would itself contribute "well beyond" that amount to develop the spacecraft.
The Artemis program is the U.S. program to return to the Moon. It is composed of missions of increasing difficulty.
In 2021, NASA chose SpaceX to build the Artemis 3 lunar lander, which will be the first mission to drop astronauts on the lunar surface since 1972. The contract was worth $2.9 billion, although SpaceX is again contributing to the effort beyond that amount.
Blue Origin, which was also competing for this first contract, had filed a lawsuit against NASA, accusing it of choosing only one company for this mission and not two as it had suggested -- a practice commonly used to guard against the possible failure of one of them. But the complaint was dismissed.
In 2022, SpaceX was also chosen by NASA for the lander of the Artemis 4 mission.
At the same time, the US space agency has launched a call for tenders to other companies for the continuation of the program.
"We want more competition. We want two moon landers," NASA chief Bill Nelson said Friday. "That means you have more reliability, and a backup alternative."
Blue Origin's lunar lander, called Blue Moon, is being developed with several partner companies: Lockheed Martin, Draper, Boeing, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics.
© 2023 AFP