Bezos’ space agency will take the first woman to the surface of the moon

Washington:

The millionaire said Friday that Jeff Bezos’ space agency Blue Origin will take the first woman to the surface of the moon. NASA is nearing a decision with the capability to send its first privately built lunar lander astronauts by 2024.

In a post on Instagram with a video of the engine test this week at the NASA Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Bezos posted on Instagram, “This is (PE-7). .

NASA sets out to buy moon resources cut by private companies

The PE-7 engine, developed by Blue Origin over the years, has raised the test-fire time to 1,245 seconds, and will power the company’s national team human landing system, the lunar lander.

Blue Origin is leading a “national team” as the main contractor assembled in 2019 to help build its “Blue Moon lander”, which includes Lockheed Martin Corp, Northrop Krumman Corp and Dropper.

Blue Origin has competed for lucrative government contracts in recent years and competes with rival billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Dynamics, owned by Lidos Holdings Inc., to win NASA’s contract to develop the next manned lunar landing system to take humans to the moon. Decade.

NASA undertakes a possible mission to Venus after recently discovering a possible life

In April, NASA awarded a $ 579 million lunar lander development agreement to the Blue Origin team and two other companies: SpaceX received $ 135 million to build its starship system and Lidos-owned Dynatics won $ 253 million.

A company spokesman said NASA was ready to select two of the three companies “in early March 2021” to continue developing their lander prototypes for team work on the moon from 2024.

But the slim funding for landing systems available to NASA by Congress and the uncertainty of the incoming Biden administration’s views on space exploration have threatened to delay NASA’s decision to pursue lunar lander agreements.