Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos who is also the head of the space exploration company Blue Origin, unveiled a mock-up of a new lunar lander spacecraft that aims to take equipment and humans to the Moon by 2024.
Bezos presented the Moon goals of his space exploration company Blue Origin at the Washington Convention Center in Washington DC, to an audience consisting of potential customers and officials from Nasa.
The announcement was made on Thursday, Jeff Bezos said, “It’s time to go back to the Moon, this time to stay.”
The world’s richest man waved an arm and a black drape behind him dropped to reveal the two-story-tall mock-up of the unmanned lander dubbed Blue Moon during the presentation.
The vehicle will be capable of carrying scientific instruments, four self-driving rovers and a future pressurized vehicle for humans.
The aim is for Blue Moon to land on the south pole of the Moon, where ice deposits have been found in craters. The water derived from that ice can be broken down to produce hydrogen, which could then fuel up the spacecraft for further missions across the solar system.
In March, the White House intended to return US astronauts to the Moon by the end of 2024, which has sent NASA into a frenzy of activity, because that particular mission was originally anticipated for 2028. In his speech, Jeff Bezos said that Blue Origin would be able to meet Trump’s deadline, but “only because” the firm had begun designing the lunar lander in 2016.
Blue Origin is working on two other major projects: New Shepard, a suborbital rocket to fly tourists into space; and New Glenn, a heavy lift, partly reusable launch rocket.
Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, the largest part of the New Shepard rocket, the first stage “booster” comes back and lands on a concrete pad shortly after launch. Similar to New Shepard, the company plans to land New Glenn’s rocket booster on a ship in the ocean.
