NASA announced it has selected Blue Origin to develop the lunar landing system for the space agency’s Artemis V mission.
The $3.4 billion contract enlists the Jeff Bezos-founded company to “design, develop, test, and verify its Blue Moon lander” for a manned mission to the Moon.
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“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,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
“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,” he continued.
NASA says the contract includes one “uncrewed demonstration mission” to the Moon in addition to a crewed mission to the lunar surface, Artemis V, in 2029.
The 2029 mission will be manned by four astronauts who will be launched using the Orion spacecraft before two astronauts transfer to the Blue Origin-made human landing system and endure a weeklong mission to the south pole of the Moon.
NASA had previously announced SpaceX would create the human landing system for the Artemis III and IV missions, which are currently planned for 2025 and 2028, respectively.
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Last month, the space agency announced the crew for the Artemis II mission, which is currently scheduled for 2024. The mission is expected to be the first manned mission around the Moon in more than 50 years.
Artemis I was the first mission in the program and saw the Orion spacecraft successfully orbit the moon and conduct tests. The unmanned mission launched on Nov. 16, 2022, after several months of delays, and successfully splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 11, 2022.
