The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) announced on Friday that it had selected a consortium led by US space-launch company Blue Origin to be its alternative human lunar landing services provider. Under a $3.4-billion firm-fixed-price contract, Blue Origin will design, develop, test and verify its Blue Moon lunar lander to meet Nasa’s lunar mission requirements. These include docking with the planned lunar-orbiting Gateway space station and making repeated missions between Gateway and the lunar surface.

This contract forms part of Nasa’s Artemis crewed space exploration programme, which will return astronauts (including the first woman and the first person of colour) to the surface of the Moon. The uncrewed Artemis I test mission was flown in November-December last year, while the crewed (but not lunar landing) Artemis II mission is planned to be launched in November next year.

“[W]e are excited to announce Blue Origin will build a human landing system as Nasa’s second provider to deliver Artemis astronauts to the lunar surface,” affirmed Nasa administrator Bill Nelson. “We are in a golden age of human spaceflight, which is made possible by Nasa’s commercial and international partnerships. Together, we are making an investment in the infrastructure that will pave the way to land the first astronauts on Mars.”

The contract requires that the Blue Moon undertake an uncrewed demonstration flight and then be able to carry out a crewed demonstration flight on the Artemis V mission in 2029. In the Artemis V mission, and Orion spacecraft will carry four astronauts to Gateway, where two will embark on the Blue Moon and descend to the lunar surface, to the South Polar region, where they will spend about a week, undertaking exploration and science, before ascending to Gateway.

The first company selected by Nasa to provide it with lunar landing services was SpaceX, founded by South African-born engineer and entrepreneur Elon Musk. SpaceX is developing a version of its Starship spacecraft for the mission. An initial version will be used for the Artemis III mission, which will return astronauts to the Moon’s surface, and an evolved version, to ensure sustainable exploration, will be employed on the Artemis IV mission.

“Having two distinct lunar lander designs, with different approaches to how they meet Nasa’s mission needs, provides more robustness and ensures a regular cadence of Moon landings,” explained Nasa Marshall Space Flight Centre Human Landing Systems Programme manager Lisa Watson-Morgan. “This approach drives innovation, brings down costs, and invests in commercial capabilities to grow the business opportunities that can serve other customers and foster a lunar economy.”