NASA has granted a contract to Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin to develop a lunar lander to take astronauts to the moon. Bezos’ company will work for the success of NASA’s Artemis mission which aims to explore the moon much more than ever before, uncovering more scientific discoveries, and preparing for future astronaut missions to Mars.
“Today we are excited to announce Blue Origin will build a human landing system as NASA’s second provider to deliver Artemis astronauts to the lunar surface. We are in a golden age of human spaceflight, which is made possible by NASA’s commercial and international partnerships. Together, we are making an investment in the infrastructure that will pave the way to land the first astronauts on Mars,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Friday.
ALSO READ| New York City is sinking due to pressure from its skyscrapers, says new research
After winning the contract, Bezos took to Twitter to express his joy and highlighted how the project will eventually lead to the exploration of deep space.
“Honored to be on this journey with @NASA to land astronauts on the Moon — this time to stay. Together, we’ll be solving the boil-off problem and making LOX-LH2 a storable propellant combination, pushing forward the state of the art for all deep space missions,” tweeted Bezos.
Notably, in 2021, Elon Musk’s SpaceX was awarded $3 billion to land astronauts on the moon through first Artemis lunar lander. The missions by SpaceX are set to take place in this decade.
Interestingly, Blue Origin’s national team partners for the project will include Lockheed Martin, Draper, Boeing, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics. Under the contract, the entire team will work on solving the boil-off problem and increasing the performance of LOX-LH2 which will power the moon lander.
