What Is Blue Moon?

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A Contradictory Vision

Blue Origin is a company built on an idea, and that idea is long-term. Founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the company’s entire existence is a bet on a very specific, very distant future. Unlike the 1960s space race, which was a geopolitical sprint for flags and footprints, Blue Origin’s vision is generational. It is stated plainly on the company’s website: “enabling a future where millions of people are living and working in space for the benefit of Earth.” This is not simply a marketing slogan; it’s a core doctrine.

The company’s philosophy, repeated by its founder and employees, is driven by a “single-minded purpose” to restore and sustain the planet. The belief is that Earth is a planet best zoned for residential and light-industrial use, while heavy industry, energy production, and other resource-intensive activities should be moved off-world. This grand, multi-generational project is intended to preserve Earth’s climate and biology. To achieve this, humanity needs a “road to space.” It needs reliable, low-cost access, and it needs to learn to live and work using the resources already in space. This is the foundational “why” that dictates everything the company builds, from its first small rocket to its ambitious lunar lander.

To understand the Blue Moon lander, one must first understand the almost contradictory philosophy that built it. The company’s official motto is “Gradatim Ferociter.” This Latin phrase, meaning “Step by Step, Ferociously,” is the key. It’s a two-part operational doctrine, a reconciliation of two seemingly opposed ideas.

The “step by step” part represents a deliberate, methodical, almost patient approach to aerospace engineering. Bezos has explained that when building a flying vehicle, especially one meant for people, there are no shortcuts. Attempting to cut corners, he has said, only creates an illusion of speed while inviting disaster. This philosophy explains the company’s first 15 years. While competitors were launching orbital rockets, Blue Origin spent over a decade meticulously developing and flying its suborbital rocket, New Shepard. It was a patient, incremental process: building, testing, flying, landing, and repeating, all to master the fundamentals of rocket propulsion and autonomous vertical landing.

The company’s mascot, fittingly, is a tortoise. It’s a direct reference to the fable of the tortoise and the hare, a reminder that “slow and steady wins the race.” Bezos has put his own spin on the concept, re-framing it as, “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” This captures the engineering ideal: a perfectly executed, methodical process, done correctly the first time, is ultimately faster than a rushed, error-prone dash.

But this patience is set against a backdrop of intense urgency. This is the “ferociously” part of the motto. This urgency is captured in the company’s coat of arms, a complex crest laden with symbolism. Dominating the top of the crest is a winged hourglass. This, as Bezos has noted, is a Victorian cemetery symbol. Its meaning is stark: “time is fleeting.” It’s a memento mori for a species, a warning that “We don’t have forever.”

This is the central contradiction at the heart of Blue Origin: the patient, methodical tortoise is being relentlessly pursued by a winged clock. The company operates with a kind of “relentless, methodical urgency.” The method is the tortoise’s, but the mindset is the clock’s. This philosophy explains the company’s seemingly paradoxical behavior. It explains how they could spend 15 years patiently testing a suborbital rocket, and then, when they lost a high-stakes NASA contract, “ferociously” protest the decision and take the space agency to federal court.

This long-term vision also dictates the company’s technology choices. The vision of “millions of people in space” isn’t feasible if every drop of fuel, water, and air must be hauled up from Earth’s deep gravity well. It requires a self-sustaining, off-planet economy. The most logical place to start that economy is the Moon, and the most valuable, accessible resource is the water ice believed to be in permanent shadow at the lunar poles.

This lunar ice is the key. It’s valuable not just as drinking water, but because its constituent parts – oxygen and hydrogen – are the most powerful and efficient chemical rocket propellant known: liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid hydrogen (LH2).

This foundational, long-term bet on lunar ice is the single most important reason why the Blue Moon lander exists in the form it does. Blue Origin’s entire lunar architecture – the lander, its engines, and its refueling systems – is built around the high-performance, but notoriously difficult-to-handle, LOX/LH2 propellant. They are designing for a future where their vehicles can be refueled at the Moon, using resources from the Moon. This strategic choice, made years ago, has defined the lander’s design, its unique challenges, and its entire path to the lunar surface.

The Path to the Moon Runs Through Texas

The Blue Moon lander did not emerge from a vacuum. It is the culmination of the company’s “step by step” hardware development, building on the lessons and technologies of its two predecessor rockets, New Shepard and New Glenn. The Moon was always the destination, but Blue Origin first had to build the tools to get there.

The first step was New Shepard. While often dismissed in its early days as a “space tourism” rocket, its true purpose was as a testbed. The New Shepard program, which first flew in 2011 and completed its first crewed mission in 2021, was where Blue Origin mastered two foundational technologies that form the core of their entire architecture.

First, it demonstrated reusable rocket systems. New Shepard’s booster was the first to fly to space (past the Kármán line) and then return for a powered, vertical landing, a feat it accomplished repeatedly. This gave the company deep operational experience with the complex guidance, avionics, and landing systems that all reusable rockets require.

Second, and more importantly for the lunar program, New Shepard provided the flight heritage for the BE-3PM engine. The BE-3PM is a “pintle-mounted” engine that is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. By flying this engine dozens of times on New Shepard, Blue Origin was methodically gathering data and operational experience on the exact propellant chemistry they intended to use for their lunar architecture. They were learning the intricacies of handling, loading, and firing the universe’s most difficult propellants in a real-world, operational environment.

The second, much larger step is New Glenn. This is the company’s heavy-lift, two-stage orbital rocket, the vehicle that the Blue Moon lander was designed to fly on. Named for John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, New Glenn is a behemoth. It stands 321 to 322 feet (98 meters) tall, placing it among the largest and most powerful rockets in the world.

Its specifications are a direct reflection of the company’s lunar ambitions. It’s designed to lift 45 metric tons (99,000 pounds) into low Earth orbit. Its payload fairing – the “nose cone” that protects the cargo during launch – is a massive 7 meters (23 feet) in diameter. This is not an arbitrary number. Standard 5-meter fairings were too small. The 7-meter fairing was sized specifically to hold the wide, squat body of the Blue Moon lander. The lander was designed for the rocket, and the rocket was designed for the lander. This is a clear example of their integrated, long-term “architecture” approach.

New Glenn’s engines also tell the story. The first stage, which is designed to be reusable for at least 25 flights, is powered by seven BE-4 engines. These engines run on liquid oxygen and liquefied natural gas (LNG), or methalox. But the rocket’s second stage – the one that operates in the vacuum of space – is powered by two BE-3U engines. This “U” stands for “upper stage,” and it is a vacuum-optimized version of the same BE-3 engine that powers New Shepard. Like its predecessor, it also runs on LOX/LH2.

This creates a clear “hydrogen ecosystem” that connects the company’s entire rocket family. The technological thread runs directly from the BE-3PM (powering New Shepard in suborbital space), to the BE-3U (powering the New Glenn upper stage in orbit), and, as we will see, to the BE-7 (powering the Blue Moon lander in deep space). This is “Gradatim Ferociter” in hardware form: a step-by-step mastery of liquid hydrogen, scaling it up from suborbital flight to orbital flight and, ultimately, to the Moon.

For years, this entire lunar architecture was held hostage by a single “critical path dependency.” The Blue Moon lander is just cargo if its rocket isn’t flying. The multi-year delays in New Glenn’s development program created a bottleneck that held the entire lunar program in check. Blue Origin couldn’t launch its Pathfinder lander, it couldn’t test its systems in space, and it couldn’t fulfill its contracts until its rocket was operational.

That bottleneck was finally broken in 2025. After a maiden flight in January 2025 that successfully reached orbit but failed to recover the booster, New Glenn’s second-ever flight on November 13, 2025, was a complete and total success. The rocket, launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, successfully deployed NASA’s twin ESCAPADE Mars probes.

Then, nine minutes after liftoff, the mission’s other objective was met. The 18-story first-stage booster, nicknamed “Never Tell Me the Odds” (a reference to a Star Wars line), executed a flawless autonomous descent and landed perfectly on the moving droneship Jacklyn (named for Bezos’s mother) in the Atlantic Ocean.

The landing was a monumental achievement. It made Blue Origin only the second company in history, after SpaceX, to successfully recover an orbital-class rocket booster. In the company’s mission control, the cheers of “Next stop, moon!” were literal. The success of New Glenn’s second mission (NG-2) didn’t just prove the rocket could fly and land; it “uncorked the bottle” for the entire lunar program. The Blue Moon lander was, at last, free to proceed.

The First Vision: A Flexible Cargo Lander

The Blue Moon lander program began years before NASA’s Artemis program was formalized. It started not as a vehicle for astronauts, but as a commercial “pickup truck” for the Moon, a key piece of infrastructure for the company’s long-term vision.

Internal design work on a large, robotic lunar lander began at Blue Origin in 2016. The program was first publicly mentioned in March 2017, but the full-scale unveiling came in May 2019 at the Washington D.C. Convention Center. There, Jeff Bezos pulled back a black cloth to reveal a full-scale mockup of the Blue Moon lander.

This initial version was presented as a large, autonomous cargo lander. It was designed to be a flexible platform capable of delivering heavy payloads to the lunar surface. Its specified capacity was 3.6 metric tons (about 8,000 pounds) delivered anywhere on the Moon. It was a “one-way” lander, meaning it would fly to the Moon and stay there, providing a stable platform for the cargo it carried, which could include rovers, science experiments, or even future habitat modules.

Alongside the lander, Blue Origin announced the new engine that would power it: the BE-7. This was a 10,000-pound-force, deep-throttling engine, and like the rest of the company’s lunar architecture, it was designed to run on LOX/LH2.

This 2019 unveiling was a classic “Gradatim Ferociter” moment. Blue Origin had spent three years privately developing a heavy cargo lander before a clear customer for it existed. At the time, NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program was focused on procuring much smaller landers, capable of carrying payloads in the 100-kilogram class. Blue Origin was building a semi-truck while the market was still buying sedans.

This demonstrated that the company was not waiting for permission or for a government contract to start building. It was building the hardware that its own long-term vision demanded, operating on the assumption that a customer (like NASA or a commercial entity) would eventually need the heavy-lift capability it was creating.

The most important detail of the 2019 reveal was a secondary one. Bezos mentioned that the lander was designed as a scalable platform. He noted that the 3.6-ton cargo version could be “stretched” to accommodate a 6.5-metric-ton, human-rated ascent stage.

This was the “tell.” It was a clear signal of Blue Origin’s true ambition. The cargo lander was just the first “step,” but a human lander was the clear, “ferocious” goal. This 2019 design, developed in private, positioned the company perfectly for what was coming next. Just months after the Blue Moon unveiling, NASA announced it was seeking proposals from private industry for a new Human Landing System (HLS) to return American astronauts to the Moon as part of the Artemis program. Blue Origin had anticipated the need and had a prototype ready before the request was even published.

The Battle for Artemis: The First National Team

With NASA’s Artemis program now a formal national goal, the race was on. The agency put out a broad solicitation for a Human Landing System (HLS), a vehicle that could take astronauts from lunar orbit (either from the Orion capsule or a planned ‘Gateway’ space station) down to the surface and back again. The initial goal was to accomplish this by 2024.

In response, Blue Origin formed a “National Team,” announcing its bid in October 2019. This was a “super team” of aerospace giants, a deliberate strategy to combine Blue Origin’s “New Space” innovation with the unimpeachable heritage and experience of “Old Space.”

The team’s structure and the proposed lander, known as the Integrated Lander Vehicle (ILV), were a model of this combined approach.

• Blue Origin served as the prime contractor. It would provide the “Descent Element,” which was a direct, human-rated variant of the Blue Moon lander it had unveiled months earlier.
• Lockheed Martin was tasked with building the reusable “Ascent Element.” This was the capsule that the astronauts would live in and ride back up from the lunar surface. It was designed to leverage technology and systems already developed for NASA’s own Orion crew capsule, which Lockheed Martin also builds.
• Northrop Grumman would provide the “Transfer Element.” This was a “space tug” based on its flight-proven Cygnus cargo spacecraft, which regularly flies missions to the International Space Station. Its job was to move the lander stack from the Gateway’s high lunar orbit to a lower orbit, preparing it for its final descent.
• Draper, a non-profit research company with a legendary pedigree, would provide the avionics and the Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) systems. This was a clear nod to history, as Draper had designed the guidance computer for the Apollo Lunar Module.

The resulting “Integrated Lander Vehicle” was a complex, three-stage machine. It was a modular, Apollo-style design that was seen by many as a traditional, robust, and safe, if expensive, solution.

The strategy behind the National Team was as much political as it was technical. It was a “safety in numbers” approach. By assembling this team, Blue Origin spread the development cost and risk. But just as importantly, it spread the political “wins.” The work, and the jobs, would be distributed across multiple states and congressional districts, touching the home turf of many powerful senators and representatives. It was a classic, time-tested aerospace contracting move, designed to be an offer so safe, so experienced, and so politically well-distributed that NASA couldn’t possibly refuse it.

The Artemis Shock: NASA Selects SpaceX

In April 2021, the aerospace industry was rocked by one of the most stunning contract decisions in modern history. NASA, which had been expected to select two HLS providers to ensure competition and redundancy, announced its choice.

The agency had selected only one company. And it was not the Blue Origin-led National Team.

NASA awarded the sole contract to SpaceX for its Starship HLS.

The decision was a shocking rebuke to the National Team’s “safety in numbers” strategy. The primary reason, as it became clear, was cost. The Blue Origin National Team’s bid for its three-stage lander was a staggering $5.9 billion. SpaceX, in contrast, had bid its enormous, fully-reusable Starship for just $2.99 billion.

NASA’s hands were tied. The agency’s leaders had repeatedly told Congress that their budget was insufficient to support the 2024 landing goal and that they needed more funding to foster competition. That funding had not materialized. Faced with a “budgetary limitation,” NASA’s administrator said the agency simply could not afford the National Team’s $5.9 billion proposal. SpaceX’s bid was not only the lowest “by a wide margin,” but it had also received the highest technical and management ratings from the agency’s source selection board.

But it wasn’t just price. As evaluation documents later became public, it was clear NASA had technical concerns with the National Team’s proposal. The three-stage architecture was complex. And, in a major validation of a key engineering challenge, the evaluators flagged a lack of detail in Blue Origin’s plan for managing the boil-off of its cryogenic liquid hydrogen propellant – a notoriously difficult problem that SpaceX’s methalox-fueled lander (methane is far easier to store in-space) had to a much lesser degree.

This decision was a watershed moment, a “New Space” reckoning. The National Team’s $5.9 billion bid represented the “Old Space” way of doing business: multiple legacy contractors, each with its own significant overhead and profit margins, layered on top of each other. The “safety in numbers” strategy had backfired. It was a political asset but a fatal financial liability, causing the final price to balloon.

SpaceX’s $2.99 billion bid represented a radically different philosophy: extreme vertical integration, a willingness to absorb billions in internal research and development costs, and an aggressive, in-house approach that allowed it to offer a price the government simply couldn’t ignore. NASA, constrained by a flat budget, was forced to choose. It couldn’t afford the “safe,” traditional, and expensive option. It had to make a bet on the revolutionary, riskier, but far cheaper one.

Ferociously: The Protest and the Lawsuit

The Blue Moon program was on the brink of cancellation. Blue Origin had just lost the single most important contract of the decade. But the company’s motto is not just “Step by Step.” It is also “Ferociously.”

Blue Origin did not go quietly. In response to the shocking loss, the company launched an aggressive, multi-pronged campaign to overturn the decision. On April 26, 2021, just days after the announcement, Blue Origin and the other losing bidder, Dynetics, filed a formal protest with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Blue Origin’s arguments were broad. It claimed NASA had improperly evaluated the proposals and had “failed to allow offerers to meaningfully compete.” The company’s lawyers argued that NASA had “waived” key technical and safety requirements for SpaceX’s proposal that it had not waived for others. The core of their argument was that NASA, in response to its undisclosed funding shortfall, had improperly changed the evaluation criteria mid-stream to make “price the most important factor,” overriding what was stated in the original solicitation.

This protest legally forced NASA to suspend its HLS contract with SpaceX, pending a ruling.

On July 30, 2021, the GAO issued its decision: the protests were rejected. The oversight body found that NASA’s evaluation of all three proposals was “reasonable” and consistent with procurement law. The GAO’s report explicitly stated that the solicitation had always given NASA the right to pick one, multiple, or no winners based on the amount of funding available.

The “ferocious” campaign did not end there. On August 13, 2021, Blue Origin escalated the fight dramatically. It filed a lawsuit against NASA in the US Court of Federal Claims, challenging the agency’s “unlawful and improper evaluation of proposals.” This was a highly controversial move, seen by many in the space community as a sour-grapes tactic that was holding up America’s return to the Moon. During this period, Jeff Bezos also published an open letter to NASA’s Administrator, offering to waive $2 billion in costs if Blue Origin were given a second contract.

The lawsuit ground the Artemis program to a halt for months. Finally, on November 4, 2021, the court dismissed Blue Origin’s lawsuit. The judge’s opinion was a final, devastating blow. The redacted report found that Blue Origin did not even have legal standing to bring the suit, because it could not prove it ever had a “substantial chance of winning” the contract in the first place. The primary reasons cited by the court were that Blue Origin’s $5.9 billion bid was “too high” and that its proposal, with its cryogenic boil-off issues, had been deemed “noncompliant.” The court concluded that NASA’s decision was not “arbitrary and capricious.”

It was a total, comprehensive, and public defeat. Blue Origin had lost the contract, lost the protest, and lost the lawsuit.

And yet, the six-month-long “ferocious” campaign, while a legal failure, had been a political success. The high-profile fight had relentlessly hammered home a single, powerful message to the media and, more importantly, to Congress: NASA’s “single-provider” approach was dangerous. Relying on only one company (SpaceX) and one lander (Starship) for the entire Artemis Moon landing was a high-risk gamble. This public-relations war, which Blue Origin had definitively lost in court, had successfully created the political opening and justification for what came next.

Redemption: The $3.4 Billion Second Chance

NASA had always wanted two landers. The agency’s leadership firmly believed that competition was the best way to reduce costs, spur innovation,, and, most importantly, provide “dissimilar redundancy” – a backup system in case one provider failed. The original 2021 HLS award to SpaceX was, for NASA, a reluctant concession to a poor budget, not a strategic choice.

The political pressure created by Blue Origin’s lawsuit, combined with a growing chorus in Congress championing the need for competition, gave NASA the opening it needed. The agency created a new, separate contract, a second path to the Moon. This program was called “Sustaining Lunar Development” (SLD), or “NextSTEP-2 Appendix P.” It was a competition to find a second lander provider to fly astronauts on a laterArtemis mission.

Blue Origin, having learned a very public and very painful $5.9 billion lesson, went back to the drawing board. It re-configured its team, redesigned its architecture, and, most importantly, sharpened its pencil.

On May 19, 2023, NASA announced the winner of the SLD contract: Blue Origin.

It was a stunning redemption. The firm-fixed-price contract is valued at $3.4 billion. The deal is for Blue Origin to develop, test, and fly its Blue Moon lander for the Artemis V mission, currently scheduled for 2029.

The new contract has specific requirements. The Blue Moon lander must be able to dock with the lunar Gateway, the small space station that NASA and its international partners are building in a “Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit” (NRHO) around the Moon. The contract also requires Blue Origin to perform at least one uncrewed demonstration landing on the Moon’s surface before the crewed Artemis V mission.

The most telling detail of the new deal is the price. The first bid was $5.9 billion. The winning bid was $3.4 billion. This is not a simple adjustment for inflation; it’s a $2.5 billion price drop. This massive reduction shows that Blue Origin had to fundamentally change its approach. The 2021 loss, the failed lawsuit, and the public $2 billion waiver offer had been a painful education in “New Space” economics. Blue Origin was forced to abandon the “Old Space,” multi-contractor, cost-plus-style model. It had to re-engineer its architecture for simplicity, absorb far more of the development cost internally, and present a price tag that was in the same ballpark as the new $2.99 billion benchmark that SpaceX had set.

NASA’s strategy had worked perfectly. By selecting only SpaceX in 2021, it had set a new, low price point for a Moon landing. By then creating a new competition, it forced all other bidders to meet that price. NASA now has what it always wanted: two different landers, from two different providers, ensuring competition and redundancy for its flagship exploration program. And it secured both for a combined price (~$6.4 billion) that was only slightly more than what Blue Origin alone had wanted for its first, overly complex, and rejected proposal.

The New National Team for Artemis V

The $3.4 billion proposal that won the Sustaining Lunar Development contract was not just a cheaper version of the first. It featured a new, streamlined architecture and a reconfigured “National Team.” The new team and its new set of responsibilities reflect a strategic shift from simply planning a single “mission” to building long-term lunar “infrastructure.”

The partners of the new National Team for Artemis V are:

• Blue Origin: Still the prime contractor, leading the overall program and building the Blue Moon MK2 (Mark 2) lander itself.
• Lockheed Martin: This partner’s role changed significantly. Instead of building the “Ascent Element” (which is now integrated into the MK2 lander), Lockheed Martin is responsible for a new, much larger piece of hardware: the Cislunar Transporter. This is a reusable “space tug” designed to refuel the Blue Moon lander in lunar orbit.
• Draper: Reprising its original role, Draper is responsible for the lander’s avionics, guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) systems.
• Boeing: A new member to the team, Boeing is building the lander’s docking system, a key component required to meet the SLD contract’s requirement to dock with the Gateway space station.
• Astrobotic: Another new member, Astrobotic (a company with its own line of smaller lunar landers) is responsible for the lander’s cargo accommodation systems.
• Honeybee Robotics: A subsidiary of Blue Origin, Honeybee Robotics is a specialist in space-based robotics and will build the cargo offloading systems.

This new lineup is telling. The first National Team was built to execute a single, Apollo-style mission: land and return. It had three distinct flight elements, including Northrop Grumman’s expendable “Transfer Element.”

This new team is built for logistics. Northrop Grumman is gone. In its place is Lockheed Martin’s reusableCislunar Transporter. The new additions of Astrobotic and Honeybee Robotics, both specialists in cargo and robotics, confirm this shift. The contract’s name, “Sustaining Lunar Development,” is the key. Blue Origin is no longer just building a lander; it is building a reusable, serviceable, and sustainable logistics chain – a trucking route – to the lunar surface.

The Blue Moon Family: A Tale of Two Landers

To understand Blue Origin’s “step-by-step” plan, it’s necessary to understand that “Blue Moon” is not a single vehicle. It is a family of two distinct landers: the Mark 1 (MK1) and the Mark 2 (MK2). The smaller, robotic MK1 is the “step” that must be taken to de-risk the larger, crewed MK2.

The Pathfinder: Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1)

The Blue Moon Mark 1 is an uncrewed, single-launch cargo lander. It is the direct descendant of the 3.6-ton-capacity lander that Bezos unveiled in 2019. Its updated specifications state it can deliver 3 metric tons (about 6,600 pounds) of cargo anywhere on the lunar surface.

The MK1 is not reusable. It is a one-way vehicle that launches from Earth, flies to the Moon, lands, and remains on the surface, where it can act as a power and communications hub for the cargo it carries. It stands 8.1 meters (26.4 feet) tall and is designed to launch on a single New Glenn rocket, which sends it on a direct trajectory to the Moon.

Its first mission, designated MK1-SN001, is the “Pathfinder Mission.” This flight, which will follow the successful New Glenn rocket tests, is a demonstration. Its primary purpose is not to deliver cargo, but to prove out all the core systems that the crewed MK2 lander will depend on. The Pathfinder’s job is to test, in a real lunar landing, the:

• BE-7 Engine: The first in-space, deep-throttle test of the new engine.
• Cryogenic Propulsion System: A test of the LOX/LH2 tanks and fuel lines.
• Avionics and Communications: Proving the lander’s “brain” can navigate and talk to Earth.
• Precision Landing: The system is designed to land autonomously within 100 meters (330 feet) of a target.

This MK1 is the “step-by-step” philosophy in hardware form. It is a deliberate de-risking strategy. Blue Origin is testing the brain, heart, and legs of its crewed lander on a robotic test flight first. This incrementalism is one of the single biggest philosophical differences from SpaceX’s all-in-one, integrated flight-testing approach.

It’s important to note that the MK1 is not “just” a test. While its first flight is a demonstration, its 3,000-kg (3-ton) cargo capacity is a massive leap in capability. Recent small commercial landers, like Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus, carried payloads of around 100-130 kg. The MK1 Pathfinder will, on its very first “test” flight, be the largest lander to ever touch down on the Moon and the first to ever use LOX/LH2 propellant. It is a record-setting, paradigm-shifting mission in lunar logistics from its very first flight.

The Artemis V Solution: Blue Moon Mark 2 (MK2)

The Mark 2 is the main event. This is the human landing system that Blue Origin is building for its $3.4 billion NASA contract. It is a much larger and more complex vehicle, designed to be fully reusable.

Where the MK1 is 8 meters tall, the MK2 stands at 15.3 to 16 meters (about 50-52 feet) tall. Its payload capacity is scaled up accordingly. It’s designed to land 20 metric tons (44,000 pounds) in its reusable configuration, or up to 30 tons if flown on a one-way, expendable mission.

This is the vehicle that will carry NASA astronauts for the Artemis V mission. It’s designed to transport a crew of two to four astronauts (Artemis V will carry two) from the Gateway space station down to the Moon’s South Pole region. It will serve as their home and base of operations for extended stays of up to 30 days on the lunar surface.

Unlike the MK1, the MK2 cannot fly directly to the Moon on a single New Glenn. It’s too large and requires too much propellant. Its mission profile is built around in-space refueling. It will launch “empty” to lunar orbit, rendezvous and dock with the Lockheed Martin Cislunar Transporter, receive a full load of LOX/LH2, and only then begin its crewed descent to the lunar surface.

The MK1 and MK2 are not separate projects. They are a single, integrated system. The MK1 shares common avionics, power, and control systems with the MK2. The lessons from the Pathfinder’s flight will be directly incorporated into the final design of the crewed lander.

How It Works: The Technology of a Deep-Freeze Lander

The Blue Moon architecture is built on three key technologies that, when combined, make it a unique and ambitious solution for lunar exploration. The entire system hinges on its specialized engine, its solution to a 60-year-old propellant problem, and its “gas station in space” refueling system.

The Heart of the Lander: The BE-7 Engine

The heart of both the MK1 and MK2 landers – as well as the Cislunar Transporter – is the BE-7 engine. This engine is the culmination of Blue Origin’s “hydrogen ecosystem” development, purpose-built for deep-space landing.

It’s a high-performance “dual-expander cycle” engine, a design known for its efficiency. Like its predecessors, it runs on LOX/LH2. It generates 10,000 pounds (44.5 kN) of thrust in a vacuum. It’s a modern engine, built using advanced techniques like 3D printing, which simplifies the manufacturing of complex components like the injector.

But its most important feature is not its power, but its finesse. The engine is capable of “deep throttling.”

This is a non-trivial and essential capability for a lander. A rocket engine for launch is like a drag racer’s gas pedal: it’s designed to be on or off, providing maximum power to escape gravity. A landing engine must be a precision instrument. As the lander burns fuel, its mass decreases, meaning it needs less and less thrust to slow down. To land softly on an unprepared, rocky, and uneven surface, the lander can’t just be a controlled crash. It needs to be able to “dial down” its power, hover over the surface, analyze the terrain, and then descend gently with pinpoint control.

The BE-7 is designed to do exactly that. It can throttle down from its full 10,000 pounds of thrust to as low as 2,000 pounds. This 5-to-1 throttle range is what gives the Blue Moon lander the fine-gloved control needed to execute the “precision landing” (within 100 meters) that the MK1 Pathfinder is built to prove.

The Deep-Freeze Challenge: Solving “Boil-Off”

The BE-7’s propellant choice, LOX/LH2, is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Liquid hydrogen is the most efficient chemical rocket fuel, giving the lander excellent performance. But it is also “super-cryogenic.” It must be kept at a mind-bogglingly cold -253°C (-424°F) to remain a liquid.

In the harsh environment of space, this is a massive problem. Heat from the sun, and even from the lander’s own electronics, constantly seeps into the fuel tanks. This heat causes the liquid hydrogen to “boil” and turn into gas, just like water in a pot. This gas, called “boil-off,” builds up pressure, and it must be vented into space to prevent the tank from exploding.

For a short mission, this is manageable. But the Apollo missions, which used different, storable (but less powerful and highly toxic) hypergolic propellants, only lasted a few days. The Artemis V mission requires the lander to operate for 30 days on the surface, plus the weeks or months it might take to travel to the Moon and wait in orbit. Over that timeframe, all of its fuel would simply boil away and be lost to space. A mission to Mars could lose 42% of its propellant mass per year this way.

The solution to this 60-year-old engineering problem is Blue Origin’s “Zero Boil-Off” (ZBO) technology. This is the single most important and enabling innovation in the entire Blue Moon architecture.

The ZBO system is an active, solar-powered refrigerator for the fuel tanks. It’s a two-part system:

1. Passive Insulation: The tanks are covered in advanced, multi-layer insulation and large sun shields to block as much heat as possible, like a high-tech thermos.
2. Active Cooling: This is the clever part. The system uses a set of “solar-powered 20-degree Kelvin cryocoolers.” These are small, highly-efficient refrigeration units. They use electricity from the lander’s solar panels to actively re-chill the propellant, capturing any gas that boils off, re-condensing it back into a liquid, and returning it to the tank.

This ZBO technology is the linchpin of the whole program. Without it, the choice of LOX/LH2 is non-viable for a long-duration mission. Blue Origin’s $3.4 billion contract is, in many ways, a bet that they can be the first to perfect this “in-space refrigerator.” The contract itself states the goal is to “move the state of the art forward by making high-performance LOX-LH2 a storable propellant combination.” This technology is the make-or-break element for Blue Origin’s lunar ambitions, and it’s a technology that could one day support high-performance nuclear thermal propulsion for missions to Mars.

The Cislunar “Gas Station”

The third piece of the puzzle is the “gas station in space.” The Blue Moon MK2 lander is too large to be launched from Earth with a full tank of fuel. It has to launch “empty” and get gas along the way. This is the job of the Cislunar Transporter, the reusable “space tug” being built by Lockheed Martin.

This Transporter is a key part of the new “sustainable” architecture. Its mission profile, which makes the entire Artemis V landing possible, is a complex ballet of its own.

1. First, the Cislunar Transporter is launched in two pieces (a “tug” and a “tanker”) on two separate New Glenn rockets.
2. These two pieces dock together in low Earth orbit.
3. Then, a series of New Glenn upper stages are launched as “tankers,” flying up to the Cislunar Transporter and transferring their LOX/LH2 propellant to fill its tanks.
4. Once it’s fully fueled, the Cislunar Transporter uses its own BE-7 engines to begin a long, slow, efficient, multi-month journey from Earth orbit to the Gateway’s orbit around the Moon (NRHO).
5. There, it “loiters,” acting as a “gas station” in lunar orbit. It, too, must use ZBO technology to keep its massive load of hydrogen from boiling off during its long trip.
6. Finally, the Blue Moon MK2 lander (launched separately on another New Glenn) arrives at the Gateway and docks with the Transporter, which then transfers the fuel needed for the lander to descend to the surface and return.

One Lockheed Martin engineer has described the Transporter as the “gas station attendant” for the Artemis V mission. This entire system is a highly complex, interdependent “three-legged stool.” The entire Artemis V mission depends on three brand-new, unproven technologies all working perfectly, in sequence: the deep-throttling BE-7 engine, the ZBO cryocooler system, and the Cislunar Transporter’s in-space refueling. A failure in the engine, the refrigerator, or the tanker truck jeopardizes the entire plan.

A Fundamental Fork in the Road: Blue Moon vs. Starship

NASA, in its quest for redundancy, is now funding two completely different lunar landers: SpaceX’s Starship HLS for the Artemis III and IV missions, and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon for the Artemis V mission. These two vehicles could not be more different. They represent a fundamental fork in the road, a bet on two entirely separate philosophies for how to live and work in space.

Size and Access: The “Elevator vs. Ladder”

The most obvious difference is size. The SpaceX Starship HLS is a true giant, a lunar-optimized variant of a vehicle designed to colonize Mars. It stands approximately 50 meters (165 feet) tall – the height of a 15-story building. The Blue Moon MK2, while massive in its own right, is a more modest 16 meters (52 feet) tall, closer to a 5-story building.

This radical size difference dictates the most basic element of the mission: how the astronauts get on and off.

• Starship: Because the crew cabin is at the very top of a 165-foot skyscraper, astronauts cannot simply climb down a ladder. They must use a complex, mechanical elevator to be lowered from the airlock down the side of the rocket to the lunar surface.
• Blue Moon: The MK2 was designed from the ground up as a lander. Its crew cabin and airlock are located near the bottom of the vehicle. Mockup testing at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory has shown a “walk-on side entrance,” with astronauts using a short, simple ladder or ramp to descend the final few feet to the surface.

Propellant and Refueling: The “LEO Ballet vs. Lunar Gas Station”

The two landers run on different kinds of fuel, which in turn dictates two completely different refueling architectures.

• Starship uses liquid oxygen and liquid methane (methalox). Methane is much easier to store for long durations than liquid hydrogen. It’s a “cleaner” propellant that doesn’t have the same extreme boil-off problems.
• Blue Moon uses liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen (hydrolox). This is a higher-performance, more efficient propellant, but it requires the complex ZBO “refrigerator” technology to be viable for a long mission. This choice was a deliberate bet on a future where lunar water ice can be used to create more propellant.

This fuel choice leads to the biggest architectural difference: how they get their gas.

• Starship must be fully fueled in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) before it ever leaves for the Moon. This requires what some have called a “tanker ballet.” A single Starship HLS must be fueled by a fleet of 10 or more “tanker” Starships, each launching from Earth, rendezvousing in LEO, and transferring its propellant. It’s a massive, highly-complex operation that happens close to home.
• Blue Moon uses the “gas station” model. Its components (the lander and the Cislunar Transporter) are launched to lunar orbit. The refueling happens once, in lunar orbit, near the final destination. It’s a (in-theory) simpler refueling operation, but it happens a quarter-million miles from Earth, at a brand-new depot that must first be assembled and fueled itself.

Ultimately, NASA is funding two separate, competing visions for the future of the solar system. Starship’s architecture, with its massive capacity and LEO refueling, is optimized for Mars. The HLS is a variant of a vehicle designed to build a city on another planet. The Blue Moon architecture, with its lunar refueling and hydrogen propellant, is optimized for the Moon. It’s a bet on cislunar infrastructure and a lunar-based, self-sustaining economy.

Summary

The story of the Blue Moon lander is the story of Blue Origin’s “Gradatim Ferociter” philosophy in action. It is a long, winding road marked by patient steps, ambitious bets, a humiliating public failure, and a ferocious, redemptive comeback.

The program began as a “step” – a self-funded, robotic cargo lander, a “pickup truck” for a lunar economy that did not yet exist. When NASA’s Artemis program created a sudden, high-stakes competition, that cargo lander was thrust into the spotlight. Blue Origin’s first attempt, a $5.9 billion “Old Space” collaboration, was too complex and too expensive. It was a stunning failure that saw the company’s grand “National Team” rejected in favor of a leaner, more radical competitor.

That failure triggered the “ferocious” part of the motto. The company launched a controversial, all-fronts protest and lawsuit. While it failed in court, the campaign successfully created the political pressure and public justification for a second-chance contract.

The result was redemption. Blue Origin won a $3.4 billion contract for the Artemis V mission, but only after re-engineering its entire approach. The new Blue Moon architecture is a smarter, leaner, and more sustainable system. It is built on a methodical “step-by-step” plan: using the robotic MK1 Pathfinder to test the high-risk systems before astronauts ever climb aboard the MK2.

With the recent, successful launch and landing of its New Glenn rocket, Blue Origin has finally cleared the path for its lunar program to proceed. The bottleneck is gone. The first “step” – the launch of the MK1 Pathfinder – is now on the horizon.

The entire, multi-billion-dollar program now hinges on mastering the “three-legged stool” of its unique technology: the precision-throttling BE-7 engine, the revolutionary ZBO cryocooler, and the complex Cislunar Transporter “gas station.” The Blue Moon lander is more than just a piece of hardware. It represents a 25-year-old company’s single-minded bet on a specific future – one powered by lunar hydrogen, built by methodical steps, and pursued with a relentless, ferocious patience. The race to the Moon is no longer just against the clock, but against a competing vision. For Blue Origin, the “Next stop, moon” is the final validation of the tortoise’s long path.