Jeff Bezos’ announcement of a $3.4 billion contract with NASA on Friday puts him one small step closer to putting a man on the moon.
But he’ll need a giant leap to beat arch rival Elon Musk to the achievement.
NASA has awarded Bezos and his private rocket firm Blue Origin a $3.4 billion contract to take astronauts back to the moon, the US space agency’s exploration chief Jim Free said on Friday.
Unfortunately for the Amazon billionaire, his space exploration rival Elon Musk is slated to make the same trip first – after NASA handed Musk’s SpaceX a similar contract in 2021.
Friday’s deal with Blue Origin heats up the space race between the two billionaires, who’ve spent years trading jibes about their respective efforts to lead humanity’s endeavors in space.
Bezos announced the mission with the cheeky implication that he intends to build a lunar base
Bezos’ lunar lander (mock-up pictured) will be built in collaboration with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, the spacecraft software firm Draper, and robotics firm Astrobotic
‘We are going to the Moon!’ Bezos said in an Instagram post, alongside a mock-up of Blue Origin’s proposed lunar lander, ‘this time to stay.’
His post teased a permanent human station on the Moon – and suggests his mission is more ambitious than Musk’s.
Musk‘s SpaceX won $3 billion in 2021 to put humans back on the moon for the first time since 1972. Bezos and Blue Origin had tried in vain to win that contract – then launched a failed lawsuit to overturn the decision.
Bezos and Blue Origin not only filed a complaint protesting Musk’s victory, rejected by the Government Accountability Office, but then sued in federal court and lost again.
Announcing Blue Origin’s contract on Friday, NASA’s chief administrator Bill Nelson was positive about the race and said the agency ‘wants more competition’.
‘It means that you have reliability. You have backups,’ he told a conference at NASA HQ in Washington.
According to Blue Origin’s lunar lander head John Couluris, the company privately contributed ‘well north’ of the contract’s $3.4 billion payout.
Couluris’ official title at Blue Origin for the past three years reads ‘Vice President for Advanced Development Programs – Lunar Permanence’ — an indication of just how long his boss has harbored plans for a permanent outpost on Earth’s natural satellite.
Bezos’ firm has been vague on details regarding its moon lander proposal, aside from namechecking its corporate partners: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, the spacecraft software firm Draper, and robotics firm Astrobotic.
Blue Origin’s craft on the Artemis V mission, according to a ‘working manifest’ NASA presented in March, will also be hauling the European Space Agency’s ESPRIT refueling and communications module, a Canadian-made robotic arm, and an unpressurized lunar rover
Musk’s NASA Artemis missions, using SpaceX’s Starship system, are planned for later this decade, with Bezos’ Blue Origin missions currently slated to launch soon after in 2029.
The Blue Origin mission, Artemis V, will deploy astronauts back to the lunar surface in an effort to explore its icy southern pole.
It promises to be the first Artemis mission to make use of both NASA’s proposed orbital Lunar Gateway as well as to touchdown on the moon’s surface.
The mission, as detailed in the space agency’s budget proposal this past March, will be tasked with delivering the European Space Agency’s ESPRIT refueling and communications module to NASA’s Gateway, as well as a Canadian-made robotic arm system.
For the surface phase of their mission, according to the ‘working manifest’ chart NASA presented in March, the Artemis astronauts will also be hauling an unpressurized lunar rover.
