Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin unveils lunar lander to take people to the moon by 2024

Last week, we wrote about Blue Origin when the company tweeted a cryptic photo of “Endurance,” the ship Ernest Schackleton used during his Antarctic expedition between 1914-1916. With just the date of “5.9.19” in the photo’s caption, many Blue Origin’s followers on Twitter speculated the company may be planning to announce its first human-rated capsule for suborbital flights.

After a week of speculation and waiting, today, Jeff Bezos unveiled the company’s “Blue Moon” lunar lander on Thursday, as well as a new BE-7 rocket engine. In a tweet posted on Twitter, Blue Origin said: “Today, our founder shared our vision to go to space to benefit Earth. We must return to the Moon—this time to stay. We’re ready to support @NASA in getting there by 2024 with #bluemoon.”

Today, our founder shared our vision to go to space to benefit Earth. We must return to the Moon—this time to stay. We’re ready to support @NASA in getting there by 2024 with #bluemoon. pic.twitter.com/UqQyMa9Zcn

— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) May 9, 2019

“We have been given a gift – this nearby body called the moon,” Bezos said, listing factors that make the moon a good target for space travel, including its proximity to earth, low gravity and ice content.

Back in March, Vice President, Mike Pence, called on The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) to build a space platform in lunar orbit and put American astronauts on the moon’s south pole by 2024 “by any means necessary”, four years earlier than previously planned. “I love this,” Bezos said of Pence’s timeline. “We can help meet that timeline but only because we started three years ago. It’s time to go back to the moon, this time to stay.”