Jeff Bezos‘ space company Blue Origin is partnering with Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp to offer NASA a lunar lander as the agency seeks to send humans to the moon again, the companies announced on Tuesday. The proposal for a joint lunar lander, led by Blue Origin, is the company’s second attempt to win a coveted contract for a lunar lander as NASA looks for other ways to get astronauts to the lunar surface as part of its multibillion-dollar Artemis program.
Last year, NASA selected Elon Musk’s SpaceX to conduct the first few Artemis moon landing missions over the next decade, rejecting a competing bid from a similar team led by Blue Origin primarily due to funding constraints. NASA later opened another competition for a second lunar lander to serve as a backup for SpaceX. Blue Origin revealed its team has submitted to NASA’s second program, in a brief statement posted on its website Tuesday, saying that “in cooperation with NASA, this team will achieve a permanent presence on the Moon.”
The deadline for proposals was Tuesday. NASA is expected to make a decision on the award in June 2023. The Blue Origin team also includes Draper, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based spacecraft software company Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics, a maker of military and civilian robotic systems that Blue Origin bought in January.