Jeff Bezos enters the space race. Blue Origin, an aerospace transportation company owned by the tycoon, will develop a lunar landing system for the Artemis V mission after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) awarded it a contract valued at some 3.4 billion dollars.
Through a press release, NASA informed that the system will allow two astronauts to travel from orbit to the surface of the Moon. Space Agency administrator Bill Nelson said:
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.
This is the second contract awarded by NASA to an outside company. The first was awarded to SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, valued at about $3 billion and to be used for the Artemis III and Artemis IV missions.
