Saturday 20 / April / 2024
Seattle: World-famous entrepreneur and founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos revealed a new spacecraft he hopes to land on the Moon by the year 2024.
At an unveiling, the billionaire highlighted the goals of his space exploration company Blue Origin and its lander Blue Moon, which he said would be able to access the resource-rich surface of the Moon.
According to Blue Origin, Blue Moon is a flexible lander that can deliver a wide range of small, medium and large payloads to the moon. Blue Moon is also capable of performing precise and soft landings, which the company says would allow for a sustained human presence on the moon.
"We must return to the Moon -- this time to stay. We're ready to support NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in getting there by 2024 with Blue Moon," the private space company said on social platform Twitter. The announcement came after NASA's renewed schedule to land US astronauts on the Moon by 2024. US Vice President Mike Pence proposed considering commercial alternatives if NASA couldn't fulfil the task.
"I love Vice President Pence's 2024 lunar landing goal," said Bezos, revealing that Blue Origin can meet that timeline "because we started this three years ago." Bezos said that the Moon is a good place to begin manufacturing in space since getting resources from the Moon "takes 24 times less energy to get it off the surface compared to the Earth." "We must return to the Moon -- this time to stay. We're ready to support NASA in getting there by 2024 with Blue Moon," the private space company said on social platform Twitter.
The announcement came after NASA's renewed schedule to land US astronauts on the Moon by 2024. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence proposed considering commercial alternatives if NASA couldn't fulfil the task. The larger variant of Blue Moon, though not shown at the event, has been designed to land an ascent vehicle that will bring Americans back to the Moon by 2024, according to Blue Origin. Blue Origin is also developing a heavy-lift launch vehicle called New Glenn which is expected to carry people and payloads routinely to Earth's orbit and beyond. It is slated for launch in 2021. Bezos also unveiled at the event the company's BE-7 rocket engine, scheduled to be test fired for the first time this summer.
