NASA Picks Blue Origin to Build Second Moon Lander for Artemis Missions

[Peter1469]

NASA wanted two different landers. They had Space X. Now they have Blue Origin too.

The idea is to start an industrial base. Two is better than one, and a start.

NASA Picks Blue Origin to Build Second Moon Lander for Artemis Missions

Jeff Bezos’s dream has finally come true, as his aerospace company Blue Origin has been chosen by NASA to build a human landing system for Artemis 5 and subsequent missions to the lunar surface.


The space agency made the announcement Friday at a press event held at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. SpaceX is currently under contract to develop human landing systems (HLS) for Artemis 3 and Artemis 4, but NASA sought to issue a second lander award for an “additional, different lander,” Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, told reporters.


“We want more competition—we want two landers—and that’s better, and it means that you have reliability, you have back-ups,” he explained. “It benefits NASA and it benefits the American people.” This is the “the new way that we go to the Moon,” Nelson said, adding that: “We’re going back to the Moon in order to go to Mars and beyond—this is a major part of it.”


The contract is worth $3.4 billion, and it will require Blue Origin to design, build, test, and verify the human landing system, but the Jeff Bezos-founded company won’t go at it alone. Dubbed the National Team, Blue Origin will develop Blue Moon alongside Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Draper, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics. The fully reusable four-person lander will be used for Artemis 5, which is currently scheduled for 2029.




Lisa Watson-Morgan, HLS manager at NASA, said the decision to go with two vendors creates a more “diversified industrial base” and that the space agency has confidence in the National Team and its approach. At the same time, steady insights from experts at NASA will help to ensure the success of Blue Moon, she added.