Jeff Bezos’s rocket company has emerged as the biggest winner in Nasa’s first round of commercial contracts granted for its $20bn Moon Base that will cover several hundred square miles near the lunar south pole.
Blue Origin will receive $468mn for two uncrewed landers, the US space agency announced on Tuesday, adding that Astrolab and Lunar Outpost would each receive a $220mn contract to build unmanned rovers that could carry astronauts in the future.
The contracts awarded on Tuesday focused on the first phase of building the Moon Base’s infrastructure, with no update on the Artemis missions which will carry astronauts to the Moon. In summer 2027 Artemis 3 is scheduled to carry out docking manoeuvres in Earth’s orbit with rival crewed landers from Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which did not receive contracts on Tuesday.