Two years after awarding a first contract to SpaceX, NASA announced on Friday that it has chosen US space company Blue Origin to build a second lunar landing system.
The lunar lander has been selected for the Artemis 5 mission, due to take astronauts to the Moon in 2029. It will first have to demonstrate its safety by making an unmanned landing on the Moon.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, said on Twitter on Friday that he was “honoured" to be part of the journey with NASA to land astronauts on the Moon.
The contract is worth $3.4 billion, but John Couluris, Blue Origin’s vice president for lunar transport, told a news conference that the company itself would contribute “far beyond” that amount to develop the spacecraft.
The Artemis programme is the US return-to-the-moon programme. It is made up of missions of increasing difficulty.
In 2021, NASA had chosen SpaceX to build the Artemis 3 lunar lander, which will be the first mission to deposit astronauts on the lunar surface since 1972. The contract was worth $2.9 billion, although SpaceX, too, is contributing more than that amount.
Blue Origin, which also competed for the first contract, had filed a lawsuit against NASA, accusing it of choosing only one company for the mission, rather than two as it had suggested — a practice commonly used to protect against the possible failure of one of them. However, the complaint was dismissed.
In 2022, SpaceX was also chosen by NASA for the Artemis 4 mission’s lunar lander.
At the same time, the US space agency issued a request for proposals to other companies for the rest of the programme.
“We want more competition. We want two lunar landers,” NASA boss Bill Nelson said on 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.
