NASA has selected Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ company, to build the lunar module for the Artemis 5 mission, scheduled for 2029. The value will be US$3.4 billion
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NASA has selected Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company, to build the lunar module for the Artemis 5 mission. The launch forecast is for 2029 and will take a team of four astronauts to the moon. The company that owns Amazon has won the dispute with Dynetics and the contract value will be US$3.4 billion.
The announcement was made last Friday (19th) and Bezos celebrated the partnership in a post on his Instagram profile. A year before the official mission, Blue Origin should make another uncrewed one in 2028, for testing, at NASA’s own request.
The contract was highly anticipated by Bezos. Previously, Blue Origin lost out to Elon Musk’s SpaceX in 2021 in another contract dispute, As mentioned by Jez Brazil. That year, NASA awarded Musk a total of $2.9 billion to develop a different version of the Starship rocket for the Artemis 3 lunar landing.
Dynetics and Blue Origin contested the decision. However, the United States Federal Government’s Board of Auditors did not comply and SpaceX was retained on the missions.
“Let’s go to the Moon! It’s an honor to be on this journey with @NASA to get astronauts to the Moon — this time to stay,” Bezos said in the post.
Blue Origin’s role in the project
Therefore, the billionaire’s company will be responsible for the design, development and testing of the lunar module, which has been dubbed “Blue Moon”. In addition, the equipment must comply with the standards set by the US Space Agency for the system for landing human beings on expeditions to the Moon.
At the same time, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the partnership with Blue Origin and other space companies is positive. We want two landing probes, it’ll be better that way. This means that there is reliability, and that there are backups. It benefits NASA and it benefits the American people. It will help NASA share risks, technical risks, and financial risks to ultimately enable mission success.”
The Artemis program began in 2017, and aims to return astronauts to the moon, which has not happened since the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s. Missions 3 and 4 of the project. And Artemis 5 is another step in this initiative.
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