Bezos’ Blue Origin wins NASA astronaut moon lander contract to compete with SpaceX’s Starship

WASHINGTON – Jeff Bezos has his NASA satellite ticket.

The billionaire's abstraction institution Blue Origin won a cardinal declaration from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration connected Friday to make a crewed lunar lander for delivering astronauts to the moon's aboveground aboriginal this decennary nether the agency's Artemis program.

The Blue Origin-led squad – which includes Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Draper, Astrobotic and Honeybee Robotics – topped the connection of a squad led by Leidos-owned Dynetics. Other proposals were expected, but apt won't beryllium revealed until NASA releases documents explaining its enactment process.

Known arsenic the Sustaining Lunar Development (SLD) program, the contention was efficaciously a second-chance contention that NASA organized aft Elon Musk's SpaceX was the sole victor of the archetypal unit lander contract successful 2021. 

That archetypal program, called the Human Landing System (HLS), gave SpaceX a adjacent $3 cardinal declaration to make a saltation of its Starship rocket for Artemis missions. Prior to the HLS award, NASA was expected to take 2 winners, but the agency's fund astatine the clip and SpaceX's more-affordable bid resulted successful determination being a azygous winner.

Both HLS and SLD are portion of NASA's Artemis programme to onshore astronauts connected the moon, with the bureau hoping to commencement flying crews to the lunar aboveground wrong the adjacent fewer years. In December, NASA completed the archetypal Artemis mission, which had nary radical connected board, flying its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft astir the satellite for the archetypal time.

Last year, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson explained the reasoning down a 2nd bidding process to adhd different privately-built lunar lander, saying, "competition is captious to our success." 

"We tin leverage that wealth by moving with a commercialized manufacture and, done competition, bring those costs down to NASA," Nelson said during Senate grounds successful 2022.

SpaceX has continued to make its astir 400-foot-tall Starship rocket successful the meantime. The institution successful April attempted to scope space with the conveyance for the archetypal time. Recently, Musk estimated that SpaceX volition spend astir $2 cardinal connected Starship improvement this year, and expects the institution to scope orbit astir the Earth with its adjacent launch.

Last year, NASA gave SpaceX with an further $1.15 cardinal grant nether the HLS contract, exercising an enactment to bargain a 2nd crewed objection landing from the company. That brought the full worth of SpaceX's HLS declaration up to $4.2 cardinal done 2027.

To date, NASA has paid retired astir $1.8 cardinal to SpaceX nether HLS, according to national records.