Blue Origin is temporarily halting space tourism flights to focus on the moon

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin is pausing space tourism flights for “at least two years” in order to focus all its resources on upcoming missions to the moon, the company announced Friday.

The decision puts a temporary moratorium on the program that Blue Origin had been using to fly humans across the Kármán Line, the recognized boundary of space, for space. The past five years.

Blue Origin made the announcement just a few weeks earlier than expected The third launch of its huge New Glenn rocketwhich is scheduled to take place in late February. The company had previously suggested it would use the New Glenn III launch to send its robotic lander to the moon, but that spacecraft is still undergoing testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has put pressure on NASA to send astronauts to the moon before the end of his second term. This has paved the way for companies other than SpaceX to compete for these missions.

“The decision reflects Blue Origin’s commitment to the nation’s goal of returning to the moon and establishing a permanent, sustainable presence on the lunar surface,” the company wrote on Friday.

Blue Origin first launched its New Shepard rocket more than a decade ago, becoming the first rocket to go into space Land safely back on the ground. Unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, the New Shepard rocket was not intended to reach Earth orbit. Therefore, its usefulness is limited to space tourism flights, which allow passengers about four minutes of weightlessness in the Blue Origin space capsule, and scientific missions.

The company said Friday that New Shepard has flown 38 times and carried 98 humans into space, along with more than 200 scientific and research payloads.

The New Shepard program was paused in 2022 after that One of the company’s boosters exploded mid-flight. There were no humans on that flight, and the capsule was safely ejected away from the booster. But New Shepard remained grounded until late 2023 while Blue Origin remained grounded I worked to determine the cause and treat it.