Jeff Bezos Unveils Plans For Blue Origin Moon Mission

Big things start small - Jeff Bezos

Founder and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos announced his intention to go back to the moon, and this time to stay there. His company, Blue Origin just unveiled Blue Moon, a new spacecraft designed to land on the moon.

Blue Moon lunar lander designed by Blue Origin. Credit: Blue Origin

Blue Origin is building a brand new rocket engine for landing on the moon. It is called BE-7 and it is designed to make all the complicated maneuvers that it takes to safely land on the lunar surface.

Bezos said they have been designing the engine for three years and could test it for the first time this summer. Developing the Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle had answered a lot of questions about how to safely land on the moon.

Blue Moon, the name of Blue Origin's lunar lander already has about six customers.

Blue Origin has been known to develop reusable spacecraft to send tourists to the edge of space and eventually to orbit by 2021. Reusable rockets are the key to the interstellar travel and can bring down launch prices, and that is what Elon Musk's SpaceX has harped on for a long time. SpaceX has been launching and reuse its Falcon 9 rocket for missions since 2015.