Bezos-founded Blue Origin lands major NASA moon lander project 

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Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos, will join NASA’s lunar lander program competing against Elon Musk’s SpaceX to develop spacecraft intended to ferry astronauts to the moon’s surface. 

NASA announced that Blue Origin will work to prepare its Blue Moon lander concept for a mission dubbed Artemis V, which is slated to take off as soon as 2028. Artemis V would be the third in a series of missions under NASA’s lunar program that’s expected to land humans on the moon. 

Blue Origin will develop its lunar lander alongside partners Lockheed Martin, Draper, Boeing, Astrobotic and Honeybee Robotics. 

Altogether, the price tag for Blue Origin’s lunar lander development program is likely worth more than $7 billion. The contract is worth about $3.5 billion, according to Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development.