Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is among six companies that will be producing studies for NASA looking at low-cost ways to use orbital transfer vehicles to deliver spacecraft to hard-to-reach orbits for the space agency.
The awards will support nine studies in all, with a maximum total value of about $1.4 million, NASA said today.
“With the increasing maturity of commercial space delivery capabilities, we’re asking companies to demonstrate how they can meet NASA’s need for multi-spacecraft and multi-orbit delivery to difficult-to-reach orbits beyond current launch service offerings,” Joe Dant, orbital transfer vehicle strategic initiative owner for the Launch Services Program at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, said in a news release. “This will increase unique science capability and lower the agency’s overall mission costs.”
Blue Origin will conduct two studies — one that focuses on potential NASA applications for its Blue Ring multi-mission space mobility platform, and another that focuses on how the upper stage of its New Glenn rocket could be used.
