Amazon’s Chairman Jeff Bezos Launches Blue Moon Lander

Chairman of Amazon and the founder of Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos unveiled the company’s blue moon lander on Thursday. Bezos during the launch said that the vehicle going to the moon will be unmanned and reusable. It will be used to carry instruments needed for research, rovers, and satellites. The moon lander will have a rocket engine called BE7 and has a thrust of 4,535 kgs or 10,000 lb.

In a by-invitation-only for customers and official events, Bezos explained the main focus of his space company Blue Origin is to make a rocket which will stay at the moon. The engine which will be test fired sometime soon will have printed parts. The specialty of the moon lander is that it can be loaded with fuel to get to the moon, payloads are sent to the earth from the lunar surface, has the ability to launch satellites that can orbit the Moon, deploy rovers which are self-driving and when fully loaded weighs 33,000 lb.

Blue Origin is a company which was founded by Jeff Bezos and has been working on making engines, rockets, and capsules for space for more than two decades now. Every year, Bezos is making an investment of $1 billion on the company was quite till now as there were no major launches until now. Blue Origin is being considered by NASA as an alternative to send astronauts to the moon. Earlier in the year, the US Vice President Mike Pence had asked NASA to work on lunar exploration and to accelerate the current timeline. NASA has also increased its funding of the ACSC program and would initially send robots and later astronauts. With Blue Origin already working on its space mission, the company is ready to meet the lunar landing goal set by Mike Pence.

The company is also working on a program to send tourists to the moon surface for 10 minutes and is called the New Shepard rocket System. It has already made some test flights with its capsule and can carry as many as 6 people and reach an altitude of 350,000 ft. The rocket boasts of a huge window that provides a view of the earth once it is launched to space. The sale of tickets for this ambitious project is yet to begin, and the company has plans to make it operative for humans sometime in the coming year.

Also, Elon Musk gave an interesting response to this latest innovation from Amazon’s Chairman, Jeff Bezos on his Twitter handle:

Oh stop teasing, Jeff 😉 pic.twitter.com/wuWPENcSE1

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 10, 2019

It is to be seen if Bezos ambition of expanding human presence across the solar system can be fulfilled.