Science

Source: The Guardian

Nasa selects Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin for first of three uncrewed lunar missions

Three lunar landings are planned for this year in preparation for the construction of a $20bn moon base

Richard Luscombe
Tue 26 May 2026 21.14 BST
Last modified on Tue 26 May 2026 22.19 BST

Nasa announced on Tuesday ambitious plans for three uncrewed lunar missions this year to kickstart construction of a $20bn moon base, and said it had chosen the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, to conduct the first.

The revelation by Nasa’s administrator, Jared Isaacman, at a press conference in Washington DC marked the first detailed public explanation of how and when the moon base will be built.

He said the three missions planned for 2026 would be followed by “more than a dozen” more in the coming years to test systems and equipment. He said the highly successful Artemis II mission last month that sent four astronauts around the moon for the first time since 1972 had been both a catalyst and incentive to advance the moon base plan.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/may/26/nasa-jeff-bezos-blue-origin