‘We’re going to the moon… this time to stay’: Jeff Bezos announces $3.4bn NASA contract to land astronauts on lunar surface with his Blue Origin craft – as he hints at plans to build first-ever base on moon

NASA has awarded Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and his private rocket firm a $3.4 billion contract to take astronauts back to the moon, the US space agency’s exploration chief Jim Free said Friday. 

‘We are going to the Moon!’ Bezos captioned his own announcement on Instagram, alongside a mock-up of Blue Origin’s proposed lunar lander, ‘this time to stay.’ 

Bezos’ Blue Origin is the second company to score a lunar mission project as part of NASA’s Artemis program, following Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which won $3 billion in 2021 to put humans back on the moon for the first time since 1972.

The victory comes after Bezos lost that 2021 NASA award to Musk, missing out on a spot collaborating with NASA for its Artemis III and IV missions.

The billionaire and his rocket company not only filed a complaint protesting Musk’s victory, rejected by the Government Accountability Office, but then sued in federal court and lost again.

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 want more competition,’ NASA’s chief administrator Bill Nelson told reporters during the event held Friday at NASA headquarters in Washington. ‘It means that you have reliability. You have backups.’

According to Blue Origin’s lunar lander head John Couluris, Blue Origin 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.