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Jeff Bezos says his space company will send a woman to the surface of the Moon for the first time.
The Amazon billionaire announced his intention on Instagram, posting a video of an engine test at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
He wrote: “This (BE-7) is the engine that will carry the first woman to the surface of the Moon.”
Jeff Bezos says his space company will take a woman to the moon for the first time
The engine has been developed by Bezos’ space company Blue Origin and has had 1,245 seconds of test time, he said.
It will power the lunar lander of the company’s National Team Human Landing System.
Blue Origin is competing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Leidos-owned Dynetics to win a contract to build NASA’s next human lunar landing system to get humans, including the first female, to the moon by 2024 as part of its Artemis program.
Two of the three companies will be chosen in March to continue building their prototypes, although there are concerns about the lack of funds that Congress makes available to NASA.
There is also uncertainty about where space exploration fits into the priorities of the incoming Joe Biden administration.
Blue Origin was founded by Bezos in 2000 and aims to provide low-cost access to space.
The first woman to go into space was Russian Valentina Tereshkova, on Vostok 6 in 1963.
Jessica Meir and Christina Koch participated in the first all-female spacewalk in 2019.
