NASA announced on Friday that it has awarded Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, the contract to build a lunar lander for their future moon missions under Artemis 5.
Artemis 5 is planned for September 2029 and will land two astronauts on the surface of the moon. The mission will involve a total of four astronauts who will depart Earth on an SLS rocket and dock with the future lunar orbiting space station called Gateway.
From there, two astronauts will use Blue Origin’s lunar lander to descend and land on the moon. NASA will contribute $3.4 billion to the development of Blue Origin’s lunar lander, while Blue Origin itself will invest even more in the project.
Blue Origin will also collaborate with partners including Lockheed Martin, Draper, Boeing, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics to build the lunar lander. It is already known that SpaceX will also land astronauts on the moon. This will occur during the Artemis 3 and Artemis 4 missions scheduled for December 2025 and September 2028, respectively. Below is a news segment from Reuters about Blue Origin’s upcoming lunar lander.
