NASA's Latest Lunar Lander To Be Built By Bezos' Blue Origin

NASA’s director announced on Friday, May 20, closing a high-stakes competition, that a team led by Jeff Bezos’ space firm Blue Origin had won the sought-after contract to build a spaceship that will transport astronauts to and from the Moon’s surface.

What We Know So Far

The US space agency chose Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin on Friday to create a human landing structure for the agency’s Artemis V mission to the Moon, beating out Elon Musk-run SpaceX in some fierce competition. Blue Origin said it is already contributing “well north” of the $3.4 billion value of the NASA grant on its own.

The project, which Blue Origin is spearheading, costs more than $7 billion.

Boeing, Astrobotic, Draper, Lockheed Martin, and Honeybee Robotics are among Blue Origin’s national team partners.

Blue Origin will design, build, test, and evaluate its Blue Moon lander to fulfill NASA’s human landing system criteria for periodic astronaut trips to the lunar surface, including docking with Gateway, a space station where crews transfer in lunar orbit. The contract also calls for design and development work and one unmanned lunar surface demonstration trip before a crewed demonstration on the Artemis V mission in 2029.

A Big Win For Bezos

The announcement on Friday in Washington was a long-awaited win for Blue Origin, which has previously competed unsuccessfully for similar contracts. The space company defeated a competing offer from Dynetics Inc., the leader of a collaboration with Northrop Grumman and a defense contractor controlled by Leidos. Bezos even posted on twitter to celebrate his win.

Honored to be on this journey with @NASA to land astronauts on the Moon — this time to stay. Together, we’ll be solving the boil-off problem and making LOX-LH2 a storable propellant combination, pushing forward the state of the art for all deep space missions. #Artemis… pic.twitter.com/Y0zDhnp1qX

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) May 19, 2023

For the 2021 contract, which was an integral part of the original lunar lander procurement program, SpaceX prevailed over these companies. Under that program, NASA said it could choose up to two firms but cited budgetary limitations for choosing only SpaceX.

As per The Economic Times, this new deal will benefit Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000 and has invested billions in it to compete with SpaceX, a significant player in satellite launches and human spaceflight, for high-profile commercial and government space contracts.