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.
The 77 heavy-lift rockets procured from Arianespace, Blue Origin, and ULA provide enough capacity to launch the majority of the Project Kuiper constellation.
NASA acquired a launch for ESCAPADE on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket using the VADR contract, and that launch is scheduled for late 2024 as the first flight of New Glenn.
A pension fund filed a lawsuit against Amazon’s board of directors alleging they acted in bad faith by approving the bulk of Kuiper launches to rockets developed by United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, and Blue Origin without considering SpaceX.
NASA selected Blue Origin in February to launch the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission to Mars.
A federal procurement database lists the Blue Origin contract for ESCAPADE at $20,000,000.
Jarrett Jones, senior vice president for New Glenn at Blue Origin, projected at World Satellite Business Week in September that the first New Glenn flight vehicle would arrive at a Florida integration facility by the end of the year and that Blue Origin planned multiple New Glenn launches in 2024.
The Government Accountability Office determined that SpaceX required 16 launches overall for a Starship lunar lander mission in its rejection of protests by Blue Origin and Dynetics of the Starship HLS award in 2021.
An Ars Technica report on 2023-11-13 identified three companies, including Blue Origin, as finalists to acquire United Launch Alliance.
Sierra Space is co-developing the Orbital Reef space station with Blue Origin.
Blue Origin is teamed with Sierra Space on the Orbital Reef commercial space station concept.
The third company that received a CLD award alongside Northrop Grumman and Voyager Space is Blue Origin.
Sierra Space is collaborating with Blue Origin to build the Orbital Reef space station.
Blue Origin claims it continues to make progress on its Commercial Destinations Space Act Agreement with NASA.
NASA is currently funding design work on commercial space stations by two teams: one led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space and the other led by Voyager Space.
Blue Origin plans to fly two 2023-03-01 lunar pathfinder landers on early flights of the New Glenn launch vehicle.
Blue Origin did not provide a launch date for the Pathfinder Mission or for future Blue Moon 2023-03-01 landers.
The Blue Moon 2023-03-01 mockup is intended to test technologies for a crewed version Blue Origin is developing for NASA’s Artemis effort.
On 2023-10-27, Blue Origin posted images of the Blue Moon 2023-03-01 mockup at its engine manufacturing facility in Huntsville, Alabama.
New generation suborbital rocket systems like those from Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin will allow research flights 10 to 100 times more frequently and at significantly lower costs than older systems.
Phil Joyce, senior vice president of the New Shepard business unit at Blue Origin, emphasized the need for a more streamlined regulatory process.