Blue Origin, founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, is an American aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight services company. It develops reusable rocket engines, launch vehicles like New Shepard and New Glenn, in-space systems, and lunar landers such as Blue Moon. Blue Origin is also a NASA partner, collaborating on the Artemis program for lunar exploration and working towards a sustainable human presence on the Moon, with partners like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Draper. Key activities include space tourism, satellite deployment capabilities, and advancing technologies to lower space travel costs.
All verified mentions of this organization in source documents.
Blue Origin plans to conduct work to fly humans to space, build and design large engines and a large orbital rocket, and return to the Moon from operations centered in Kent.
Blue Origin broke ground on the Kent facility in January 2019 and completed construction in 11 months.
Blue Origin opened a new headquarters and R&D facility in Kent, Washington on 2020-01-06.
NS-12 carried two student art projects selected in a competition run by Blue Origin and rock band OK Go.
NS-12 hosted thousands of postcards submitted by students through Blue Origin’s nonprofit arm, Club for the Future.
The NS-12 mission lifted off from Blue Origin’s West Texas test site at 12:53 p.m. Eastern.
OK Go partnered with Blue Origin to send the two winning Art in Space student art experiments on NS-12.
United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin, and Northrop Grumman were developing new launch vehicles for the Phase 2 competition and projected first flights of those rockets in 2021.
The Government Accountability Office issued its decision on Blue Origin’s protest on 2019-11-18 and released a redacted version of the full decision on 2019-11-22.
Blue Origin argued that awarding Phase 2 contracts in 2020 would favor ULA and SpaceX because those companies already have certified vehicles and launch infrastructure.
The Air Force signed cost-sharing agreements in October 2018 with Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, and United Launch Alliance to help pay for vehicle development and launch infrastructure.
The Air Force agreed to provide Blue Origin $500,000,000 between 2019 and 2024 to cover some costs of preparing the New Glenn rocket and related infrastructure to support military launches.
A 2019 study titled "Integrating Commercial Space Innovations into National Security Missions" recommended certifying multiple vendors based on agreed-upon base standards for mission assurance, capability, and business capacity, and that study was funded by Blue Origin, Leidos, and Rocket Lab.
Blue Origin filed a pre-award protest with the Government Accountability Office on 2019-08-12 challenging the Air Force’s RFP evaluation criteria.
ULA chose to start Vulcan Centaur as an expendable vehicle in order to transition from the Russian-built RD-180 to Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines as quickly as possible.
Blue Origin filed its formal pre-award protest with the Government Accountability Office on 2019-08-12.
The Government Accountability Office sustained Blue Origin’s protest of the Air Force’s National Security Space Launch Phase 2 request for proposals on 2019-11-18.
Blue Origin will offer the Blue Moon lander, unveiled in May 2020, which is capable of carrying several tons of cargo to the lunar surface.
Blue Origin's national team announced by Jeff Bezos on 2019-10-22 submitted a proposal to NASA by the 2019-11-05 deadline.
The Day 3 issue of the Show Daily was published 2019-10-23 and features a cover story on Blue Origin joining forces with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper to compete for NASA’s lunar lander contract.