Blue Origin is pausing its area vacationer flights to work on lunar landers for NASA

Blue Origin plans to put a focus on the event of its human lunar capabilities, so it gained’t be sending vacationers to area for a minimum of the following two years. Meaning we gained’t be seeing any New Shepard launches for fairly a while. Blue Origin is without doubt one of the corporations NASA selected to develop human touchdown programs for its Artemis program, together with SpaceX. Particularly, it should work on landers for the Artemis III and Artemis V missions.

The corporate was originally contracted to construct the human touchdown system that may switch astronauts from NASA’s Gateway station to the moon’s South Pole area for the Artemis V mission. However final yr, NASA requested Blue Origin to design an alternative lander for Artemis III after SpaceX skilled delays attributable to Starship’s failed tests. Artemis III is anticipated to be the primary crewed moon touchdown mission of this system, and the Trump administration desires it to occur earlier than the tip of the president’s time period.

New Shepard takes vacationers to suborbital area, the place they expertise a couple of minutes of weightlessness earlier than the spacecraft makes its means again to Earth. Jeff Bezos was one of many passengers on New Shepard’s first tourist flight again in 2021. Since then, it has flown and landed 37 extra instances and carried 98 passengers to the Karman line, together with Katy Perry and William Shatner.