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.
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Blue Origin’s foundation, Club for the Future, will offer each of 19 nonprofit charitable organizations a $1,000,000 grant funded by the auction for the first paid seat on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.
United Launch Alliance signed an agreement with Blue Origin in 2014 to jointly fund development of the BE-4 engine.
Jeff Bezos proposed waiving up to $2,000,000,000 in fees over three years and performing an additional demonstration mission at no cost to NASA if Blue Origin received a second Human Landing System award.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office denied protests on 2021-07-30 that Blue Origin and Dynetics filed against NASA’s award of a single Human Landing System contract to SpaceX.
Blue Origin’s original bid for the Human Landing System program was nearly $6,000,000,000.
The Government Accountability Office is reviewing protests filed in April by Blue Origin and Dynetics regarding the Human Landing System awards and has an 2021-08-04 deadline to issue a ruling.
DARPA awarded a $2,500,000 contract to Blue Origin to design a spacecraft concept for the DRACO program.
Blue Origin offered, at its own cost, to develop and launch a pathfinder mission to low Earth orbit of the lunar descent element.
The Blue Origin-led National Team submitted a bid of $5,990,000,000 for the Human Landing System contract.
In April 2021, only SpaceX was offered the opportunity to revise its price and funding profile for HLS while Blue Origin was not offered the same opportunity.
Blue Origin built the National Team with four major partners and more than 200 small and medium suppliers in 47 states.
Blue Origin offered to pay for a demonstration mission as part of its proposed second Human Landing System award.
Blue Origin offered to waive all payments in the current and next two government fiscal years up to $2,000,000,000 to bridge the HLS budgetary shortfall.
Jeff Bezos sent a 2021-07-26 letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson offering that Blue Origin would waive up to $2,000,000,000 in payments if NASA awards Blue Origin a second Human Landing System contract.
Blue Origin stated that the single-source HLS selection locks lunar missions into 10+ Super Heavy/Starship launches to deliver a single lander to the surface.
The U.S. companies SpaceX and Blue Origin developed staged combustion engines with the Raptor and the BE-4, respectively.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard is an autonomous vehicle designed to be controlled from the ground, so onboard passengers did not operate the spacecraft on the 2021-07-20 flight.
The NS-16 mission lifted off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas at 9:12 a.m. Eastern.
Blue Origin performed its first crewed New Shepard launch on 2021-07-20.
Sarah Knights joined Blue Origin in 2016 and serves as Internship Program Manager.