Blue Origin

Vision to enable a future where millions of people are living and working in space to benefit Earth. In order to preserve Earth, Blue Origin believes in the need to enable humanity to expand, explore, find new energy and material resources, and move industries that stress Earth into space.

Created: 2018-11-01

Updated: 2024-07-08

Classification

Human Spaceflight & Landers

Category

Suborbital Space Tourism
Human Spaceflight

Fields

Suborbital

Status

Active

First launch

2015

New Shepard

New Shepard is our reusable suborbital rocket system designed to take astronauts and research payloads past the Kármán line – the internationally recognized boundary of space. Whether you are an astronaut flying with Blue Origin or sending a payload to space, your 11-minute flight on New Shepard will be the experience of a lifetime.

Pressurized crew capsule environmentally controlled for comfort with room for six and the largest windows to have flown in space.

Blue Origin to resume crewed New Shepard flights, SpaceNews, 2024-04-05.

Blue Origin resumes crewed New Shepard suborbital flights, SpaceNews, 2024-05-19.

Classification

Space Stations & Habitats

Category

Commercial Space Station

Status

Development

First launch

2025

Space Station

Blue Origin and Sierra Space have partnered to develop Orbital Reef, a commercially owned and operated space station to be built in low-Earth orbit, which will start operating in the second half of this decade.

Looking for Orbital Habitat Formulation Lead at the end of 2020 to develop Blue Origin’s vision of millions of people living and working in space and to establish viable LEO destination systems in the 2020s.

Orbital Reef teammates include Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering, and Arizona State University. Orbital Reef’s human-centered space architecture is designed to be a “mixed-use space business park” that provides essential infrastructure needed to support all types of human spaceflight activity in low-Earth orbit and can be scaled to serve new markets.

The station’s shared infrastructure will support the proprietary needs of diverse U.S. and international users, tenants, and visitors, including those representing research, industry, government, and the commercial sector. Features such as reusable space transportation and advanced automation can minimize cost and complexity to enable the widest range of users. Accommodations, vehicle docking ports, and utilities can all be scaled with growth in market demand.

NASA awarded $130 million to develop designs of space stations and other commercial destinations in space.

NASA will partner with seven U.S. companies to meet future commercial and government needs, ultimately benefitting human spaceflight and the U.S. commercial low Earth orbit economy. Through unfunded Space Act Agreements, the second Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities-2 initiative (CCSC-2) is designed to advance commercial space-related efforts through NASA contributions of technical expertise, assessments, lessons learned, technologies, and data. Blue Origin is collaborating with NASA to develop integrated commercial space transportation capability that ensures safe, affordable, and high-frequency US access to orbit for crew and other missions.

NASA’s Commercial Partners Continue Progress on New Space Stations, 2023-12-12.

• Blue Origin, which NASA awarded a Space Act Agreement in 2021 to develop a free-flying space station named Orbital Reef, recently completed tests for a window system and a structural demonstration.
• For the structural test, Blue Origin used a prototype of their space station’s main module, called the Core, to demonstrate the manufacturing processes required to build the final pressurized modules of the station. The test supports validation of the structural models and analytical tools for the Core’s structural design.
• The International Space Station’s cupola, a room with seven windows overlooking the Earth, is the cornerstone of crewed missions for both research and astronaut morale. Orbital Reef will incorporate multiple windows on its Core, with each window spanning about twice the size of a car windshield. For the window test, Blue Origin evaluated the window integration structure design concept and its performance against the pressures and temperatures the windows will be exposed to while in orbit.

Created: 2022-01-01

Updated: 2024-07-09

Classification

Human Spaceflight & Landers

Category

Human Landing System
Commercial Lunar Lander

Fields

Moon

Status

Development

First launch

Not announced

Human Landing System

One of the 3 awardees for the NASA Lunar Human Landing System.

Blue Origin is the prime contractor for the National Team that includes Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper. Their Integrated Lander Vehicle (ILV) is a three-stage lander that harnesses the proven spaceflight heritage of each team.  

Blue Origin will build the descent element which is powered by BE-7 cryogenic engines three years in private development, with cryogenic technologies now under Tipping Point support.

• Lockheed will build the ascent element that includes the crew cabin, which will have significant commonality with Orion. Northrop Grumman will build the transfer element based largely on its Cygnus cargo module that services the International Space Station.
• Northrop Grumman is also leading development of a future refueling element for a sustainable lander demonstration. Draper will provide the guidance, navigation and control, avionics, and software systems that draw largely on similar systems the company has developed for NASA. 
• In their proposal, the National Team outlines a plan in which the ILV can dock with either Orion or the Gateway to await crew arrival. The Blue Origin National Team’s elements for the Human Landing System can be launched individually on commercial rockets or combined to launch on NASA’s Space Launch System.

Blue Moon - Cargo Lander

The cargo lander variant is designed to provide reliable, repeatable, and cost-effective delivery of a wide variety of payloads to the lunar surface. Based upon configuration and mission, we can land up to several metric tons of payload on the Moon, ranging from large rovers, habitats, and ascent stages. The service facilitates greater opportunities to conduct science, in-situ resource utilization, infrastructure development, and logistics missions for government, academia, and commercial customers.

News

Blue Origin targets 2025 for cargo lander’s inaugural moon trip, with humans to follow, 2024-03-04.

• Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is aiming to send an uncrewed lander to the surface of the moon in the next 12 to 16 months, according to the executive in charge of the development program.
• The Pathfinder Mission would demonstrate the MK1’s capabilities — including its hydrogen-fueled BE-7 engine, its precision landing system and its ability to deliver up to 3 tons of payload anywhere on the moon.
• The in-space refueling operation would make use of a cislunar transporter, built by Lockheed Martin, that could travel between low Earth orbit and lunar orbit with supplies. “We are now building with NASA the infrastructure to ensure lunar permanency,” Couluris said.

Created: 2022-09-09

Updated: 2024-07-09

Classification

In-Space Manufacturing

Category

ISRU (In Situ Resource Utilization)

Fields

Orbital Microfabrication
Moon

Status

Development

First launch

Not announced

ISRU

Since 2021, Blue Origin has been making solar cells and transmission wire from regolith simulants. We have pioneered the technology and demonstrated all the steps. Our approach, Blue Alchemist, can scale indefinitely, eliminating power as a constraint anywhere on the Moon.

• We start by making regolith simulants that are chemically and mineralogically equivalent to lunar regolith, accounting for representative lunar variability in grain size and bulk chemistry. This ensures our starting material is as realistic as possible, and not just a mixture of lunar-relevant oxides.
• We have developed and qualified an efficient, scalable, and contactless process for melting and moving molten regolith that is robust to natural variations in regolith properties on the Moon.
• For protection from the harsh lunar environment, solar cells need cover glass; without it, they would only last for days. Our technique uses only molten regolith electrolysis byproducts to make cover glass that enables lunar lifetimes exceeding a decade.
• Because our technology manufactures solar cells with zero carbon emissions, no water, and no toxic ingredients or other chemicals, it has exciting potential to directly benefit the Earth.

Blue Origin is hiring two full-time engineering positions completely focused on ISRU for the Moon and beyond.

In 2018, NASA has set up three research tracks as part of its public-private NextSTEP-D program. “NextSTEP” stands for “Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships.” The D refers to Appendix D of the NextSTEP-2 program description, which focuses on ISRU technologies.

• Track 1 supports one-year trade studies to identify ISRU technology gaps and further define the benefits of including ISRU in mission architectures. In addition to Blue Origin, Track 1 participants include United Launch Alliance, the University of Illinois at Urbana and UTC Aerospace Systems.
• Track 2 supports component development and testing in simulated space environments. Companies selected for Track 2 are BlazeTech Corp., Paragon Space Development Corp., Skyhaven Systems and Teledyne Energy Systems.
• Track 3 focuses on extensive subsystem development and testing in simulated space environments. The Track 3 companies are Honeybee Robotics Spacecraft Mechanisms Corp. and OxEon Energy LLC.

NASA has selected 11 U.S. companies to develop technologies that will support long-term exploration on the Moon and in space under its sixth Tipping Point opportunity.

• Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, $34.7 million.
• The company will advance an end-to-end in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) system that can extract oxygen, iron, silicon, and aluminum from lunar regolith simulant and use the extracted materials to produce solar cells and wire.
• Blue Alchemist to make solar cells on the Moon using moondust, 2023-07-27.

DARPA LunA-10 Program Study

PowerLight Technologies says it’s joined a team headed by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture to design a power beaming system that might someday charge up robots on the moon.
The effort is being funded by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as part of its LunA-10 program, which supports concepts for future lunar infrastructure projects. DARPA selected 14 industry teams, including Blue Origin’s team, to receive up to $1 million each for studies that are due this spring.
Blue Origin and PowerLight are focusing on a system that could generate power for lunar operations — perhaps using solar cells manufactured on the moon — and then transmit that power to remote locations via laser light. We’ve reached out to Blue Origin for more information about its plans and will update this report with what we hear back.

Created: 2023-02-05

Updated: 2024-01-27

Classification

Space Utilities

Category

Resources - Energy

Fields

Nuclear Power
Nuclear Propulsion

Status

Concept

First launch

Not announced

Nuclear

Under a program called DRACO, short for demonstration rocket for agile cislunar operations, DARPA wants to demonstrate nuclear thermal propulsion technology — using a nuclear reactor to heat up rocket fuel to generate thrust.

DARPA awarded General Atomics a $22 million contract to develop the nuclear reactor. Lockheed Martin’s contract value is $2.9 million and the Blue Origin’s is $2.5 million.

Created: 2023-03-12

Updated: 2023-03-12

Classification

In-Space Transportation

Category

Transport Service (Earth-LEO)
Transport Service (LEO-GEO)
Persistent Platform
Space Tug
Robotic Space Station
In-Space Logistics
Space Logistics Platform
In-Orbit Computing
In-Space Mobility

Fields

Transport Service (In-Space)

Status

Development

First launch

Not announced

Blue Ring

Blue Ring serves commercial and government customers and can support a variety of missions in medium Earth orbit out to the cislunar region and beyond. The platform provides end-to-end services that span hosting, transportation, refueling, data relay, and logistics, including an “in-space” cloud computing capability. Blue Ring can host payloads of more than 3,000 kg and provides unprecedented delta-V capabilities and mission flexibility.

Blue Ring is part of a newly formed Blue Origin business unit called In-Space Systems.

Blue Ring has 12 docking ports, each able to accommodate payloads weighing up to 500 kilograms. A top deck on the spacecraft can carry payloads weighing up to two and a half tons. The spacecraft offers 3,000 meters per second of delta V, or change in velocity, to maneuver to different orbits.

Created: 2024-01-20

Updated: 2024-02-02

[1] https://www.blueorigin.com/

[2] https://blueorigin.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/BlueOrigin/job/Kent-WA/Orbital-Habitat-Formulation-Lead_R4688

[3] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/blue-origin_gradatimferociter-activity-6634120828952940544-mg2W/

[4] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-selects-blue-origin-dynetics-spacex-for-artemis-human-landers