![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20251008_BlueMoon_mk1.jpeg\")
An artist\u2019s rendering of Blue Origin\u2019s Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander on the surface of the Moon. Graphic: Blue Origin<\/p>\nAn artist\u2019s rendering of Blue Origin\u2019s Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander on the surface of the Moon. Graphic: Blue Origin<\/p>\n
Blue Origin is still several years off from its currently contracted mission to bring astronauts to the Moon\u2019s South Pole on the Artemis 5 mission. But it has a number of spacecraft in development with at least one set to fly to the lunar surface as soon as potentially later this year.<\/p>\n
The company is also developing plans that could expedite the Artemis 3 mission, which will be the first human landing on the Moon as part of NASA\u2019s Artemis program.<\/p>\n
Jacqueline Cortese, Blue Origin\u2019s Senior Director of Civil Space, represented the company during a Tuesday panel at the American Astronautical Society\u2019s 2025 von Braun Space Exploration Symposium. Dubbed \u201cArtemis 3 and Beyond: Establishing a Permanent Lunar Presence,\u201d Cortese was there to discuss Blue Origin\u2019s plans for both astronaut and cargo flights to the Moon.<\/p>\n
She said that Blue Origin\u2019s first mission to the Moon will be an uncrewed Blue Moon Mark 1 lander is going through final stacking in Florida. The 8.1-meter-tall cargo lander will help with ongoing development of their crewed lander, named Blue Moon Mk. 2, which is 15.3 meters tall.<\/p>\n
Both are powered by Blue Origin\u2019s BE-7 engines, which are being tested on stands in Alabama, Texas and Washington. Company CEO Dave Limp shared a 17-minute-long video of one hot fire test in Texas meant to simulate the Apogee Raise Maneuver for the Blue Moon Mk. 1 lander.<\/p>\n
With rocket engines, boring is good. To that end, please enjoy this 1,030-second (17+ min!) BE-7 engine burn. This test represents the Apogee Raise Maneuver or ARM burn for our Blue Moon Mark 1 Lunar lander, plus margin, the longest burn required by the mission to reach the Moon.\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/8bnU9fequn<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Dave Limp (@davill) October 1, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cA big milestone for you to look out for online is that Mk. 1 is three modules that are being stacked as we speak: aft, forward and mid. And once it is stacked in its finished configuration, we will be barging it over to NASA Johnson Space Center Chamber A to do a full up thermal vac campaign,\u201d Cortese said. \u201cSo when you see that on its boat, you will know that big things are happening.\u201d<\/p>\n Both versions of the lander are powered by a combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. A key difference though is that Mk.1 can be launched to the Moon with a single launch of Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn rocket while Mk. 2 requires orbital refueling.<\/p>\n Cortese said the stacking work for the first Blue Moon Mk.1 lander is happening at a dedicated production plant for the spacecraft located at Port Canaveral, which is south of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. She said Blue Origin is ramping up a production line for the Blue Moon Mk. 1 landers, stating that the aft section for the second of these vehicles is currently in structural testing.<\/p>\n \u201cThat first Mk. 1 is intentionally not carrying 3,000 kilograms of payload because it\u2019s a demo flight, right? It is sensored. So many instruments, so many sensors, PSI, instrumentation with NASA, etc., but that vehicle itself is intended to grow into a production line,\u201d Cortese said.<\/p>\n The first of these landers will carry NASA\u2019s SCALPSS (Stereo Cameras for Lunar-Plume Surface Studies) and LRA (Laser Retroreflective Array) payloads onboard. Cortese teased that it would launch \u201cin the next couple of weeks,\u201d but didn\u2019t offer further details on the timeline.<\/p>\n \ud83d\udcf8 Lights, cameras, lunar action! @NASA<\/a>\u2019s SCALPSS (Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies) was recently installed on our Blue Moon MK1 lander. It will measure how much lunar dust is stirred up during landing and capture any resulting crater formation, providing data to\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/mesAgVyHg6<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Blue Origin (@blueorigin) October 20, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n During the 2025 International Astronautical Congress in Australia, Pat Remias, Blue Origin\u2019s Vice President of Space Systems Development said the company intends to recover the first stage booster flying on the upcoming EscaPADE mission for NASA (planned to launch in early November) and then reuse it for the first flight of a Blue Moon Mk. 1 lander.<\/p>\n Last month, NASA tapped<\/a> the Blue Moon Mk. 1 as the vehicle that will deliver its VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) mission to the Moon\u2019s South Pole as part of the agency\u2019s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) task order. This new contract is valued at $190 million and it will be the second flight of a Blue Moon Mk. 1 lander.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re very excited for that one, not just as a test bed for what we\u2019re doing on HLS (Human Landing System program), but as its future for logistics infrastructure and big permanence on the Moon,\u201d Cortese said.<\/p>\n While Blue Origin is preparing to send these cargo landers to the Moon, the far more challenging endeavor is creating a safe passage for astronauts to travel to and from the lunar surface. In May 2023, NASA awarded<\/a> Blue Origin a firm-fixed price contract valued at $3.4 billion to develop a crewed lander for the Artemis 5 mission, which was scheduled for 2029 at the time.<\/p>\n The contract calls for at least one uncrewed landing demonstration of a Blue Moon Mk.2 lander before the vehicle can host NASA\u2019s astronauts as part of the Human Landing System (HLS) program.<\/p>\n For the Artemis 5 mission, Blue Origin will use the Blue Moon Mk. 2 lander, which will require the use of their Lunar Transporter for in-space cryogenic propellant transfer. Work has been underway for some time to prepare systems to store propellant at the necessary temperatures to mitigate or prevent boil off.<\/p>\n The first test article assembled and tested in Lunar Plant 1: our Lunar Transporter sunshield! \u2600\ufe0f\ud83d\udee1\ufe0f<\/p>\n Designed to be one of the largest deployable shields in space, it will protect both our Transporter and Blue Moon MK2 Crew Lander from radiation while the two vehicles are\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/rhyPLmypJx<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Blue Origin (@blueorigin) September 22, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cBlue Origin has been working to mature our cryo cooling capabilities over the last several years and we\u2019re now holding, with proto-flight hardware, 90 and 20 Kelvin in lab environments and we have some big, upcoming milestones for that,\u201d Cortese said. \u201cWe worked with NASA super hard this summer on this test campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n Additionally, the Blue Origin Utility Transfer Mechanism was recently tested inside the TS300 thermal vacuum chamber at NASA\u2019s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Cortese said the Lunar Transporter will using similar propellant tanks to those flown on the company\u2019s New Glenn rocket.<\/p>\n Like New Glenn, the Lunar Transporter will also use seven BE-4 engines as its main propulsion system. Both the Lunar Transporter and the Blue Moon Mk. 2 are being built at the Lunar Plant 1 building at Blue Origin\u2019s Rocket Park campus in Florida.<\/p>\n While these spacecraft are coming together, Cortese said Blue Origin is also working closely with NASA on the habitation area of the Blue Moon Mk. 2, which will house two astronauts during their mission down to the lunar surface and back up to the Gateway, a space station being developed by NASA and other international partners.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve definitely decided to insource a lot of the ECLSS (environmental control and life support system) and environmental components,\u201d Cortese said. \u201cI think that supply chain is an area where we wanted to have a lot of robustness and redundancy.<\/p>\n \u201cI think what we were seeing was some down range supply chain issues in the ECLSS area, so we are working to vertically integrate a number of those areas. We\u2019ve made some great progress on that.\u201d<\/p>\n Cortese added that there are some \u201cawesome synergies\u201d between their work for HLS and their bid for a successor to the International Space Station, which Blue Origin and its partners dubbed, Orbital Reef.<\/p>\n Lunar dust up<\/p>\n Looming over the \u201cArtemis 3 and Beyond\u201d panel was the fate of that mission itself. In the midst of the ongoing government shutdown \u2014- which also prevented NASA employees from participating in this week\u2019s conference -\u2014 NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said he would be reopening the contract for the Artemis 3 mission because SpaceX is behind in its HLS work.<\/p>\n The company founded by billionaire Elon Musk is developing a variant of its Starship rocket that will be capable of taking crew down to the surface. It was granted a $2.89 billion contract for the Artemis 3 mission in April 2021 and a separate $1.15 billion contract for an Artemis 4 landing.<\/p>\n SpaceX completed 11 integrated test flights of its Starship-Super Heavy rocket and is preparing to transition to the third major version of the launch vehicle. However, the company was expected to have completed its in-space propellant transfer demo by mid-2025 and that operation now not expected until sometime in early- to mid-2026 at the earliest.<\/p>\n Through its most recent public update, NASA set the Artemis 3 launch for mid-2027, but many expect that this date won\u2019t bear out.<\/p>\n \u201cSpaceX had the contract for Artemis 3. By the way, I love SpaceX. They\u2019re an amazing company. The problem is they\u2019re behind. They pushed their timelines out and we\u2019re in a race against China,\u201d Duffy said in an Oct. 20 appearance on CNBC\u2019s Squawk Box show<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe President and I want to get to the Moon in this President\u2019s term. So, I\u2019m going to open up the contract. I\u2019m going to let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin,\u201d Duffy added. \u201cAnd whatever one can get us there first, to the Moon, we\u2019re gonna take. And if SpaceX is behind and Blue Origin can do it before them, good on Blue Origin.\u201d<\/p>\n This led to Musk berating<\/a> Duffy on X, formerly Twitter, with allegations<\/a> about Duffy\u2019s perceived competence to run NASA while simultaneously serving as the Secretary of Transportation.<\/p>\n Asked during the panel what work it was doing to capitalize on this new opportunity, Cortese played it close to the vest.<\/p>\n \u201cSince it\u2019s definitely a competitive environment, I probably won\u2019t say too much about it, but we did just kick off that work with NASA. We\u2019re super excited about it. We have a lot of ideas,\u201d Cortese said.<\/p>\n \u201cI will say it this way. Especially with Mk. 1 and some of our preceding work we\u2019re doing, we have what we think are some good ideas about maybe a more incremental approach that could be taken advantage of for an acceleration-type scenario, which is ultimately still on that end path to sustainability, but is perhaps more incremental in near term.\u201d<\/p>\n Aarti Matthews, Director of Starship Crew and Cargo Programs at SpaceX, was listed as one of the participants of Tuesday\u2019s panel, but was missing from the final line up.<\/p>\n \t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20251028_Blue_Moon_Mk1_VIPER_small.jpeg\")
This artist\u2019s concept shows Blue Origin\u2019s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander and NASA\u2019s VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) on the lunar surface. Graphic: Blue Origin
\nReturning humans to the Moon<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20251028_cryo_cooler_Blue_Moon_small.jpeg\")
Blue Origin\u2019s Lunar Performance teams tests the company\u2019s zero-boil-off technology designed to store liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen onboard its Lunar Transporter. This will support the system that will allow in-space propellant transfer operations for the Blue Moon Mk. 2 lunar lander. Image: Blue Origin<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20250116_Starship_Orion_docking.jpeg\")
An artist\u2019s rendering of the Human Landing System version of Starship docking with NASA\u2019s Orion spacecraft in lunar orbit. Graphic: SpaceX<\/p>\n