NASA chooses a Jeff Bezos ship to take its astronauts to the Moon

The founder of Amazon and owner of Blue Origin sued NASA when it chose Elon Musk’s company to build the Artemis 3 lunar module. Now, it has won the contract to manufacture a second module, which it has named Blue Moon

Jeff Bezos is used to getting what he wants and although the Moon had resisted him, he has finally managed to make his name go down in the history of the space race as part of Artemis, the program to return to our satellite.

NASA has awarded Bezos’s aerospace company, Blue Origin, the contract to develop a second luna moduler that will take its astronauts to the satellite from Artemis 5. Bezos’s company will build its lunar module called bluemoon, in alliance with veterans Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Draper and Astrobotic.

With this same module, Bezos attended NASA’s first call to build the module that will carry the astronauts of the Artemis 3 mission, the first to return to transport humans to the Moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

To Bezos’ chagrin, the winner of the first contest was Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX, which managed to get NASA to choose its Lunar Starship module (a version of the same ship that a few weeks ago tested for the first time together with the Super Heavy rocket. Despite the fact that it managed to take off, the ship could not separate from the rocket and made explosion.

Jeff Bezos appealed his rival’s choice, but after a long judicial process, the courts agreed with NASA and it was confirmed that SpaceX will manufacture the module for Artemis 3, which will not be launched before 2025.

A few months ago, NASA called a new contest to develop a second module that would serve its crew members on future Artemis missions, which Jeff Bezos’ company has managed to win.

The contract, for a total of 3.4 billion dollars, will finance the design, development and testing of the Blue Moon lunar landing module so that it meets NASA’s requirements for traveling to the Moon and docking with the future Lunar Orbital Station Gateway, in the construction of which the European Space Agency (ESA) actively participates. The contract includes an unmanned test mission to the lunar surface, to be followed by another manned mission, Artemis 5, in 2029.

“Today we are pleased to announce that Blue Origin will build a human landing system as NASA’s second supplier to deliver the Artemis astronauts to the lunar surface,” NASA Director Bill Nelson said in a statement. NASA’s top executive believes that “we are in a golden age of human spaceflight, made possible by NASA’s international and commercial partnerships. Together, we are making an investment in the infrastructure that will pave the way for first astronauts reach Mars.