NASA is beginning training with a prototype of Blue Origin’s crew moon lander following the successful Artemis II crewed mission. The agency aims for a moon landing in 2028 and has selected both Blue Origin and SpaceX to provide the landers for this mission, although neither company has yet demonstrated a moon landing.
This week, NASA announced it has a full-scale prototype of the crew cabin of Blue Origin’s Mark 2 lander at its Johnson Space Center. The prototype measures 15 feet tall and will be used for human-in-the-loop tests, which include mission scenarios, communications, spacesuit checkouts, and simulations for moonwalk preparations.
The complete lander, once all integrated systems are assembled, will stand 52 feet tall. NASA noted the difficulty of landing on the moon, stating that both Blue Origin and SpaceX face challenges to ensure their landers are ready by the agency’s 2028 timeline.
An uncrewed version of Blue Origin’s lander, named Endurance (or MK1), is currently undergoing tests in NASA’s thermal vacuum chamber ahead of its first mission later this year. This mission will focus on delivering science payloads to the lunar surface.
As part of the next phase of the Artemis program, Artemis III is planned for 2027, where a crew will fly in the Orion spacecraft to low Earth orbit to test docking capabilities with both Blue Origin’s and SpaceX’s landers.
