

The winning of the contract could start a promising rebound year for Blue Origin after a number of delays and setbacks - including the failure of one of its New Shepard vehicles, which travel to space but not to orbit, during a launch last September that carried experiments but no passengers. Lisa Watson-Morgan, the manager for the human landing system program at NASA, said the second lander “also helps us with a more diversified industrial base, and that will help us advance innovation in the future.” ”We want more competition,” Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA, said during the announcement on Friday at NASA’s headquarters in Washington.

In the past, some members of Congress have complained about providing taxpayer money to Blue Origin, given Mr. John Couluris, Blue Origin’s vice president for lunar transportation, said that the company was contributing “well north” of the price of the NASA contract amount to the development effort and that it, not NASA, would absorb any cost overruns. Astronauts are to land on the moon in a vehicle built by SpaceX for the Artemis III and IV missions. The mission, Artemis V, is another critical piece of NASA’s Artemis program to send astronauts back to the moon as part of an effort to explore its south pole region. NASA agreed to pay $3.4 billion for the 50-foot-tall spacecraft, which is named Blue Moon and can transport four astronauts to the moon’s surface. Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, to provide a lunar lander for a moon mission that is scheduled to launch in 2029. NASA announced on Friday that it had awarded a contract to Mr.

On their second try, Jeff Bezos and his rocket company have won a contract to take NASA astronauts to the moon.
