Jeff Bezos cancels his area tourism flights to give attention to taking folks to the Moon | Science | EUROtoday

Blue Origin leaves area tourism to hitch the brand new race to the Moon. Billionaire Jeff Bezos’ area firm introduced this Friday that it’s going to pause “for at least two years” the suborbital journeys of its New Shepard rocket, with which millionaires and celebrities have been getting into area because the tycoon himself inaugurated these flights as a passenger in July 2021. In an announcement, the corporate highlights that it’s going to allocate the sources of this tourism initiative “to accelerate the manned lunar flight program.”

The announcement has brought on shock within the area sector, which considers the biggest tourism initiative thus far definitively cancelled. The New Shepard rocket has flown 38 occasions and in its 14 flights manned It has led 98 folks to beat the Kárman line – which marks the border with area, 100 kilometers above the Earth’s floor. Spanish businessman Alberto Gutiérrez, founding father of Civitatis, participated within the final of those journeys, paying a million-dollar ticket (undisclosed) to go up and down in an area capsule and expertise three minutes of weightlessness.

In February 2025, it was the adventurer and tv presenter Jesús Calleja who participated in that media expertise that reopened the talk on whether or not these suborbital flights with none technical exercise, and after minimal coaching, may grant their contributors the class of astronauts.

The most controversial second of this area tourism program was in April of that very same yr, with its “women-only” area flight — which Blue Origin even in comparison with the exploits of Valentina Tereshkova, the primary astronaut in historical past. Participating in that flight have been, amongst others, the singer Katy Perry and the reporter Lauren Sánchez, then fiancée of Jeff Bezos.

Target: the Moon

In the assertion with which Blue Origin cancels the vacationer area flights deliberate for the approaching months, Bezos’ firm emphasizes its dedication to the US goal “of returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent and sustained presence there.” Its first step might be to launch its Blue Moon lunar lander, with which it deliberate to deploy a robotic probe on the Moon in early 2026. However, final week Bezos’ firm introduced that it’s going to use this area flight — the third mission of its New Glenn superrocket — to place into orbit a huge satellite tv for pc to convey web to cell phones and that may illuminate the sky as a lot because the brightest stars.

This new delay within the growth of Blue Moon may justify Bezos’ choice to allocate the sources of his area tourism initiative to his lunar program. And it additionally raises the query of whether or not NASA could be contemplating turning to Blue Origin to land the primary astronauts on the lunar floor since 1972. That function, within the Artemis 3 mission, corresponds in precept to Elon Musk’s SpaceX firm, however its gigantic Starship area shuttle will not be but prepared. After eleven check flights, it has not even managed to achieve Earth orbit; one thing important for any area mission, and that the New Glenn rocket achieved in its first check, in January 2025.