Bezos tries again with the Moon, a new proposal to NASA

After the successful suborbital flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft with three space tourists aboard, Jeff Bezos tries again with Luna. The Amazon tycoon and founder sent a letter on behalf of his Blue Origin to US space agency administrator Bill Nelson with an offer to cover costs of up to $ 2 billion – this year and over the next two. years – for the development and production of a lunar lander. And since Bezos loves to play with coincidences, on the Blue Origin website the news of the letter to NASA was posted just before the 50th anniversary of Apollo 15, launched on July 26, 1971, the first mission in which astronauts – David R Scott, Alfred M. Worden and James B. Irwin – used the Apollo Lunar Surface Drill and the Lunar Roving Vehicle. The contract for the new lunar lander itself is worth nearly $ 3 billion and is part of NASA’s Artemis program which, at the moment, does not seem to have publicly responded to Blue Origin’s new bearish offer. If NASA were to consider Jeff Bezos’ new proposal, the games between Blue Orgin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX would in fact reopen. NASA had in fact excluded Blue Origin in the tender procedure last April and instead awarded SpaceX the contract to develop the first commercial lander to bring astronauts to the Moon. many times. NASA’s Artemis program aims to bring astronauts back to the moon by 2024 as a springboard for the first human mission to Mars. NASA’s Artemis mission will see four astronauts launched on the Orion spacecraft in lunar orbit, two of them then transferring to SpaceX’s human landing system for their journey on our natural satellite. The two astronauts will explore the lunar surface for about a week before returning to Earth.