Bezos' Blue Origin joins in taking NASA astronauts to the moon

 Two years after awarding the first contract to Elon Musk's SpaceX company, NASA announced Friday that it had selected the American aerospace company Blue Origin to develop a second lander with the aim of transporting astronauts to the surface of the moon.

The probe was selected for the Artemis 5 mission, which is scheduled to operate in 2029. The vehicle's safety will first have to be proven by sending it to land on the moon without a crew. "I am honored to be part of this journey with NASA," billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, wrote on Twitter Friday.

The contract is valued at $3.4 billion, but John Collores, vice president of lunar transportation at Blue Origin, said at a news conference that the company itself would contribute "much more" to the development of the vehicle. The Artemis program is the American program to return to the moon, during which missions of increasing difficulty will be conducted.

The program began with the Artemis 1 mission, during which a spacecraft was sent around the moon last fall, without a human crew. The Artemis 2 mission will send four astronauts around the moon in the fall of 2024, without landing there. The identity of the pioneers who were chosen for this mission was finally revealed, and they are three Americans and a Canadian.

After that, Artemis 3 will be the first mission to land astronauts on the moon since 1972. It is officially scheduled for the end of 2025, but many rule out the success of the mission at this date. After that, two consecutive missions, Artemis 4 (in 2028) and Artemis 5 (in 2029), will also land on the moon, but they will first pass through a new space station in lunar orbit called “Getawi”, which has not yet been completed.

Strong competition

In 2021, NASA selected SpaceX to develop the lander for the Artemis 3 mission. The contract value was $2.9 billion, though SpaceX also contributed more than that amount to the effort. Blue Origin, which also competed for this first contract, has filed a complaint against NASA, accusing it of choosing one company rather than two as it first implied. But the complaint was dismissed.

In 2022, NASA also selected SpaceX to develop the Artemis 4 lander. At the same time, the US space agency issued a call for proposals from other companies for the remaining stages of the program. "We want more competition. We want two lunar landers," Bill Nelson, head of the US Space Agency, said on Friday. "This means more reliability and a backup alternative."

The Blue Origin lander, dubbed Blue Moon, will be 16 meters high and weigh 45 tons when filled with fuel made from liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Several companies are involved in the project, including Boeing, Draper, Astrorobotic, Honeybee Robotics and Lockheed Martin.

The latter will be responsible for developing a crucial component. Once in lunar orbit, Blue Moon will need to refuel before it can land and collect astronauts from the lunar surface.

Lockheed Martin should develop a shuttle that will be responsible for refueling Blue Moon around the moon. Blue Origin plans to use the New Glenn rocket, which has never been used for a space mission, to launch both the lander and the shuttle.