NASA Partners With Blue Artemis Lunar

By: J. Chadwick Gay / Photos

“We're here to celebrate the newest member of the HLS fam- ily and newest member of the Artemis family and kick off that next big step in creating a lunar ecosystem,” said Jim Free, NASA Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development. “With this incredible capability, we’ll reduce costs to taxpayers and create new business opportunities to further foster a linear economy where NASA can be a customer among many. It’s truly groundbreaking and humanity-changing. We've never built an ecosystem on another celestial body, and it will be challenging. However, we have to deliver on our capabilities across all of Artemis. That's ultimately my responsibility.

“I'm challenging the Blue Origin team today and the entire HLS team to bring Blue Moon online in a timely manner,” Free added. “With that landing system, we'll have another tool in our tool belt to help meet our mission needs. I truly be- lieve in the team that we have at NASA, the team that we have across the industry, and what they are capable of.”

Adding another human landing system partner to NASA’s Artemis program will increase competition, reduce costs to taxpayers, support a regular cadence of lunar landings, further invest in the lunar economy, and help NASA achieve its goals on and around the Moon in preparation for future astronaut missions to Mars.

The agency previously contracted SpaceX to demonstrate an initial hu-