Blue Origin suspends New Shepard program for moon landing mission

Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced Friday that it is freezing its New Shepard space tourism program for a couple of years. Instead, the company will refocus its efforts on preparing for missions to the Moon to win the race with SpaceX to provide NASA with a lander for a future landing.

Since 2021, New Shepard's reusable rockets have made dozens of flights, bringing celebrities and participants in research experiments to the Carman Line . Now flights as part of the mission on suborbital rockets for space tourism will not be carried out for at least two years.

Blue Origin said in a press release that the decision was due to the need to redirect resources to "further develop the company's capabilities in the field of manned lunar expeditions":

“This decision reflects Blue Origin’s commitment to the nation’s goals of returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent and sustainable presence on it.”

As Reuters notes , the vertical landing technique of the New Shepard rocket allowed the company to subsequently develop its heavy orbital launch vehicle, the New Glenn, which competes with Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch vehicles. Some resources will also be redirected to its development, according to a letter sent to company employees.

For some employees, the freeze of the New Shepard program came as a surprise. Some of them consider it as a complete cancellation of the program, the agency notes.

In a conversation with The Insider , missile launch analyst Georgy Trishkin calls this decision quite logical. Blue Origin is currently in a lunar race against SpaceX for the right to provide a lander for the future Artemis III mission.

Over the past few months, American officials have repeatedly spoken about the need to return their astronauts to the Moon before China does. Thus, at the end of December last year, US President Donald Trump signed a decree “to ensure US superiority in space.” Among other things, it envisions a new lunar landing under the Artemis program by 2028, and by 2030, “the creation of the initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost” and the launch of a lunar nuclear reactor.

Landing on the Moon is now one of the main national projects and a priority for NASA, so Bezos’ company is freeing up all available resources to meet the deadline in 2 years, the analyst explains:

Last fall, NASA requested an accelerated plan from two lunar module contractors to return astronauts to the Moon before the end of the current presidential term at the end of 2028. SpaceX, with its Starship-based system, began to fall behind after a series of accidents in 2025 and is no longer meeting its landing target until 2027.

Two missions on the Blue Origin system were planned only after 2030 using the Blue Moon MK2 vehicle, but their accelerated plan involves using a smaller version of it, the MK1, which is not yet suitable for manned flights. According to my sources from the company itself and NASA, they have been working hard on it for a long time. The first test cargo delivery ship is scheduled to launch this spring, and if successful, it will improve Blue Origin's chances of landing an order for one of the two Artemis III missions. Yes, the architecture of this program will change, but announcements will only be made after the completion of the upcoming Artemis II .

It is also critical for Jeff Bezos' company to increase the number of orbital launches of the New Glenn rocket. Last year there were only 2 flights instead of 5, while SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon 9 a whopping 165 times. And a heavier version of the New Glenn 9x4 is on the way.”

The New Shepard program itself was initially a test platform for the development of hydrogen and vertical landing methods, notes Trishkin. The idea to develop it as a business line for suborbital flight arose as it was developing, but entailed many costs. In its current form, the program is most likely already dead, the expert believes , but the company cannot yet announce its cancellation, since it still needs to formalize obligations to clients:

“Suborbital tourism simply doesn’t make economic sense, and neither Blue Origin nor Virgin Galactic have come up with a profitable long-term model. The company never released numbers, but the New Shepard program was estimated within the industry to cost $100 million annually to maintain. Even at a cost of $1 million per ticket (the price for ordinary buyers), the company needs to conduct at least 17 launches per year for New Shepard to be profitable. Last year there were only 9 launches, and in 2022 there was an accelerator failure, and we had to order another one as a replacement.”