Blue Origin wins contract to bring NASA’s Viper rover to the Moon
NASA yesterday awarded Blue Origin a contract to use its Blue Moon lunar lander to transport the agency’s troubled Viper rover to the Moon’s south pole region.
The CLPS task order has a total potential value of $190 million. This is the second CLPS lunar delivery awarded to Blue Origin. Their first delivery – using their Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) robotic lander – is targeted for launch later this year to deliver NASA’s Stereo Cameras for Lunar-Plume Surface Studies and Laser Retroreflective Array payloads to the Moon’s South Pole region.
With this new award, Blue Origin will deliver VIPER to the lunar surface in late 2027, using a second Blue Moon MK1 lander, which is in production. NASA previously canceled the VIPER project and has since explored alternative approaches to achieve the agency’s goals of mapping potential off-planet resources, like water.
The contract does not guarantee this mission. NASA has several options along the way to shut things down, depending on the milestones Blue Origin achieves. The first of course is the success of that first lunar lander.
The announcement does not make clear how NASA is going to pay for the work needed to finish Viper. VIPER was originally budgeted at $250 million. When cancelled in 2024 its budget had ballooned to over $600 million, and that wasn’t enough to complete the rover for launch. Moreover, after getting eleven proposals from the private sector companies to finish and launch Viper, in May 2025 NASA canceled that solicitation.
It is very likely Blue Origin is picking up the tab, but if so the press release does not say so.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
NASA yesterday awarded Blue Origin a contract to use its Blue Moon lunar lander to transport the agency’s troubled Viper rover to the Moon’s south pole region.
The CLPS task order has a total potential value of $190 million. This is the second CLPS lunar delivery awarded to Blue Origin. Their first delivery – using their Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) robotic lander – is targeted for launch later this year to deliver NASA’s Stereo Cameras for Lunar-Plume Surface Studies and Laser Retroreflective Array payloads to the Moon’s South Pole region.
With this new award, Blue Origin will deliver VIPER to the lunar surface in late 2027, using a second Blue Moon MK1 lander, which is in production. NASA previously canceled the VIPER project and has since explored alternative approaches to achieve the agency’s goals of mapping potential off-planet resources, like water.
The contract does not guarantee this mission. NASA has several options along the way to shut things down, depending on the milestones Blue Origin achieves. The first of course is the success of that first lunar lander.
The announcement does not make clear how NASA is going to pay for the work needed to finish Viper. VIPER was originally budgeted at $250 million. When cancelled in 2024 its budget had ballooned to over $600 million, and that wasn’t enough to complete the rover for launch. Moreover, after getting eleven proposals from the private sector companies to finish and launch Viper, in May 2025 NASA canceled that solicitation.
It is very likely Blue Origin is picking up the tab, but if so the press release does not say so.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I must admit to being a little amused every time there is “news” about Blue Origin. I still hope that they will eventually look like a serious company.
My curiosity led me to the Blue Origin website. I believe I have found one of the factors hindering any significant developments.
“”Our Commitment to Earth, Space, and Community. Earth is humanity’s forever home. Yet Earth is finite, and it’s our job to preserve and rejuvenate it for future generations. This requires developing short, and long-term sustainability solutions at home and in space. Blue Origin exists for the benefit of Earth.
We recognize the importance of protecting and restoring our planet and strive to minimize our carbon footprint and promote sustainable practices in all aspects of our operations here on Earth.””
I believe that the ultimate “greening” that will result from using the sustainable, carbon footprint model is that the regular Blue Origin staff will be green with envy at SpaceX and others.
It isn’t like Bezos couldn’t have paid for a bloody rover himself. He is, I think, a more mature individual than Elon.
Then too, Musk stays hungry.
He will spare no expense in at least trying to get humanity off-world.
It is just as well. If you are a young buck you go to SpaceX.
If you have a wife and kids, you work for Blue Origin or anywhere else for that matter.
Ronaldus Magnus said;
“I believe I have found one of the factors hindering any significant developments“
You nailed it, any company who’s business model is built upon lies is doomed to failure. It is unsustainable to;
“We recognize the importance of protecting and restoring our planet and strive to minimize our carbon footprint”
All life is based upon that carbon they wish to sequester and destroy… A footprint of 1/10 of the crust of the planet that is made from carbon!
It is a natural occurring substance, a element of nature whom they feel they must destroy at all cost? A death cult of all living things? Do they feel the same way about the carbon in the atmosphere and ice caps on Mars? And Venus atmosphere?
If they are bent on this fools errand, perhaps they can start with the sequestering of the lime stone in mount Everest and all the Himalaya Mountains… That should take them a few thousand years to bury all that carbon. By then they may have a plan to protect the earth from fresh carbon in X class flares from the sun? Insanity.
Jeff Wright, I have a couple of drinks with Elon over Jeff Bezos any day. I’m not sure how to classify Bezos but an engineer he isn’t. Elon is.
I admit that I’m happy to see Viper get another lease on life. Yeah, it shouldn’t have cost this much to develop, and or taken this long; giving it to Ames and Dan Andrews was a dubious call — and that is merely one bullet point in the long and convoluted history of this project which goes back to the Resource Prospector project days. But the thing is built now and mostly tested, and the interest in properly characterizing lunar water ice at the south pole remains. Might as well use it, if we still can.
But first, Blue Origin has to land its Mk1 lander on the Moon successfully. And as we have seen, that is anything but a guarantee for commercial contractors taking their first crack at tasting regolith at non-fatal impact speeds. God speed, gentlemen.
Jeff Wright,
I don’t think “mature” is quite the word you want here. Bezos is certainly much more reserved and establishmentarian than Musk. Musk is brash and playful. So is Sir Peter Beck for that matter. So Musk has no monopoly on these characteristics even in the ranks of space company CEOs.
Mike Borgelt,
Oddly enough, Bezos actually has an engineering degree but has never, so far as I know, actually functioned as an engineer at either Amazon or Blue Origin. Musk, of course, does not have any sort of engineering degree but he does have a Physics degree and is an auto-didact where engineering – of several kinds – is concerned.
In that respect, Musk follows in the footsteps of previous American titans of tech industry. Henry Ford not only had no college degree, he never even attended high school. Thomas Edison was home-schooled in reading, writing and arithmetic and had less than a year of formal education because of early partial deafness. Neither of the Wright Brothers attended college and only Wilbur finished high school. Glenn Curtiss lacked both high school and college education. Frank Whittle, the British co-inventor of the turbojet engine, also lacked a college degree.
Richard M,
Agree that it’s good to see Viper not going to waste – hopefully. Also agree that we must all be honorary Missourians where Blue Origin is concerned.
Dick Eagleson wrote: “Musk is brash and playful. So is Sir Peter Beck for that matter. So Musk has no monopoly on these characteristics even in the ranks of space company CEOs.”
I suspect that many of us space cadets — I mean space fans, — were science fiction fanatics. I think that the experts (if they really are experts) now call it “being on the spectrum” meaning autism spectrum.
“Musk, of course, does not have any sort of engineering degree but he does have a Physics degree …”
I worked with a physicist who only had a Master’s Degree, and in our science laboratory, if you didn’t have a PhD you weren’t a real scientist (out of 120 people in the department, there were 90 PhDs, resulting in a problem of too many Frankensteins and not enough Igors), so he ended up doing engineering. Don’t tell Sheldon (of the Big Bang Theory), but physicists tend to make good engineers.
“In that respect, Musk follows in the footsteps of previous American titans of tech industry.”
I think that the really smart people tend to do what it takes to teach themselves what they need to know in order to get what they want. College graduates don’t always understand that college is not for everyone, not even for some people who want to do what we went to college to do. My siblings and parents all got into programming as professions, but not one of them got a degree in programming or computer science.
A lot of folks get hung up on what piece of paper an individual has on the wall.
In the past, a Harvard degree all but guaranteed employment. Now folks run from that of course.
Edward,
Sci-fi fans can certainly be odd ducks, but I’ve been around a lot of them and I don’t think most are fairly characterizable as being “on the spectrum.” Musk self-identifies as being “on the spectrum” and is certainly a sci-fi fan. The major ships in the SpaceX Navy are all named after ships in the Iain M. Banks “Culture” series of novels.
A lot of programmers – especially the best ones – are, or were, auto-didacts. I studied computer science at the college level but never completed a degree. In retrospect, it was largely a waste of time. The curriculum was centered mostly around programming language design and compiler construction – not things for which there is much demand in the commercial world. Nearly everything I used in post-college software employment – systems analysis, structured programming and database technology – I learned on my own by reading books.
Dick Eagleson,
“A lot of programmers – especially the best ones – are, or were, auto-didacts.”
Yes. I learned far more about engineering after I graduated and started working full time than I learned in college. Early on, especially in my pre-graduation jobs, each time I was given a task I was in far over my head and had to learn quickly what to do and how to do it. Even my first job after college, I was supposed to design an instrument for a spacecraft and only had practical experience designing and making a vacuum chamber during a summer job. That first post-college job was interesting and extremely educational.
I think we all learn more after school than during school, but that is only because the specific job and career we end up in cannot be completely taught in school. So in a way, we are all autodidacts.
Or if someone isn’t, then he doesn’t get to be among the best of programmers/engineers/whatever.