Amazon's Bezos Also Heads to the Moon... NASA Selects Lunar Lander Contractor

Space company Blue Origin has been selected as the lunar lander contractor by the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Blue Origin is a company founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

This is the second selection following SpaceX, led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, as a lunar lander contractor. The competition between the two billionaires in space is heating up again.

On the 19th (local time), NASA announced that the consortium led by Blue Origin was selected as the lunar lander development contractor for the 'Artemis' project. The Artemis project is NASA's mission to send humans back to the moon for the first time in half a century since Apollo 17's last moon landing in 1972.

Blue Origin formed a consortium with American aerospace companies Lockheed Martin and Boeing, as well as space engineering company Honeybee Robotics. Blue Origin's selection this time corresponds to the second phase of the 'Sustaining Lunar Development' (SLD) program, also known as the 'Human Landing System' (HLS).

Previously, NASA planned to assign lunar lander development to two companies when selecting SpaceX, but due to budget constraints, only SpaceX was selected, which drew opposition from Blue Origin and others. Blue Origin even filed a lawsuit. However, NASA decided last year to return to the originally planned competitive system for manned lunar landers and to select a second contractor besides SpaceX, giving Blue Origin an opportunity.

The contract amount for SpaceX two years ago was $2.9 billion (3.8541 trillion KRW), and Blue Origin's contract this time amounts to $3.4 billion (4.5186 trillion KRW). Like SpaceX, Blue Origin will develop a lunar lander and provide it to NASA, and after verifying the performance of an uncrewed lander, it will land astronauts on the moon by 2030.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.