Blue Origin Unveils “Blue Moon,” Its Big Lunar Lander

The spacecraft could ferry astronauts to the moon’s surface as early as 2024

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos unveils a mockup of the Blue Moon lunar lander on May 9, 2019.

Jonathan Newton *Getty Images*

Join Our Community of Science Lovers!

Blue Origin is shooting for the moon!

The private spaceflight company revealed the first life-size mockup of its new lunar lander, named “Blue Moon,” at the Washington Convention Center yesterday (May 9).

“This is an incredible vehicle, and it’s going to the moon,” Blue Origin founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos told a room full of spectators after the curtain dropped to reveal the big, shiny spacecraft.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

Blue Moon is designed to carry rovers and other large payloads to the lunar surface, but it could also take astronauts to the moon, said Bezos, who also founded Amazon.com and is the richest person in the world. To modify Blue Moon for a crewed spaceflight, the company would top the spacecraft with an attachable, pressurized ascent vehicle.

Before launching astronauts to the moon, Blue Origin would first test out the lunar lander with an uncrewed mission, Bezos said.

While Bezos did not explicitly state that Blue Origin plans to offer its new vehicle to NASA for the agency’s ambitious push to land American astronauts on the moon in 2024, a newly posted description on the company’s website states that the crew-carrying variant of Blue Moon “has been designed to land an ascent vehicle that will allow us to return Americans to the moon by 2024.”

(Blue Origin representatives had mentioned Blue Moon before, but they hadn’t given us a good look until this week.)

NASA has not yet selected a lander for that historic trip, so Blue Moon may be a contender. Just last month, Lockheed Martin revealed its proposed plans to build a lunar lander. Lockheed’s lander (which has yet to receive a proper name) would be part of the company’s “early Gateway” infrastructure for a sustainable human presence on the moon.

Whether NASA astronauts can really make it to the moon by 2024 is still a subject of debate, but a few things are certain: private companies and other space agencies around the world are gearing up for a new wave of lunar exploration, and Blue Origin has entered the new moon race.

Subscribe to Support Independent Journalism

Great science journalism requires human expertise, time, effort and creativity. And it costs money. That’s why I and the journalists here at Scientific American hope you’ll join our community.

When you subscribe, you are supporting staff and freelance journalists who are passionate about telling science stories that are true, important and compelling. Our editors and reporters are often experts in their fields, which means they understand the nuances of big discoveries and can untangle the breakthroughs from the hype. With a subscription, you are also supporting rigorous fact-checking to ensure the words we publish are precise and accurate. And you’re supporting original illustrations, graphics and photos that bring you closer to an advanced laboratory, an ice sheet in Antarctica or a space mission in orbit. You’re helping us craft other types of high-quality journalism as well: Our newsletters are carefully written, edited and curated by staffers you have or will come to know and love. Our Science Quickly podcast is based on original reporting, collaboration with editors and scientists and exacting production.

Subscriptions keep this engine running so we can continue to deliver thoughtful, rigorous and independent science journalism to you. In an era of viral misinformation, this work is crucial. If you value what we do, I hope you’ll consider joining us as a subscriber

Thank you,

Jeanna Bryner, Editor in Chief, Scientific American