Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is among 12 companies chosen to collaborate with NASA on new technologies that could become part of future missions to the moon and Mars.
Blue Origin has signed up to work with NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia and Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama on friction-stir additive manufacturing. It’ll also partner with Langley as well as Ames Research Center in California to work on a metallic thermal protection system.
“We’re pleased to have been selected by NASA to partner on developing these technologies,” Blue Origin said in an email.
NASA says Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin and the other 11 companies will advance capabilities and technologies related to the space agency’s Moon to Mars Objectives. The work will be done under the terms of unfunded Space Act Agreements, following up on an Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity issued last year.
That means no money will be transferred between NASA and its partners. Instead, NASA will make its in-house expertise available to help the companies develop products that the space agency could procure for future missions.
