Blue Origin conducted the first tests of the engine for the lunar landing module (video)

The Blue Origin space company conducted the first successful fire tests of the BE-7 engine, which plan to equip the Blue Moon lunar landing module, presented in May at a special presentation.

The founder of Blue Origin Jeff Bezos announced the tests in his microblog, clarifying that they were held at the George Marshall space flight center. During the test, the engine worked within 35 seconds, and the data obtained indicate that everything went smoothly, the Bezos noted, which attached a video of the tests to tweet.

FIRST HOTFIRE OUR #BE7 LUNAR LANDINGANE JUST YESTERDAY at Marshall Space Flight Center. Data Looks Great and Hardware is in Perfect Condition. Test Went Full Planned Duration - 35 Seconds. Kudos to the Whole @blueorigin Team and Grateful to @nasa_marshall for All the Help! pic.twitter.com/ctjjrngumy

- Jeff Bezos (@jeffbezos) June 20, 2019

At the May presentation, Bezos said that the development of the Blue Moon module is carried out as part of a larger Blue Origin program for organizing flights to the Moon. Blue Moon can be used to deliver people and goods to the surface of the moon, but so far the company has introduced only a prototype of the cargo version of the module, which can deliver cargo weighing up to 3.6 tons to the moon. According to Bezos, Blue Origin engineers have developed a more lifting version of the module, which can carry cargo weighing up to 6.5 tons and can deliver people to the moon. At the same presentation, it was reported that the BE-7 engine works on a mixture of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, and in theory the source of fuel can be water mined on the moon, The Verge notes.

Probably, Blue Origin will take part in the NASA program to return people to the moon by 2024 - by the end of this year, the agency plans to choose one or two companies for the development of a lunar landing module. The current successes of Blue Origin look like a statement to win this selection.

Recall, recently, an attempt by the private Israeli company Spaceil to deliver to the moon the “Bereshit” probe ended - the apparatus, the name of which repeats the first word of the Book of Genesis (“at the beginning”), crashed when landing on the surface of the satellite. Soon, Spaceil reported that the project team will develop and launch a new landing lunar apparatus "Bereshit 2".