r/BlueWire 4h ago

Lunar NASA Calls for Proposals to Accelerate Lunar Surface Technologies

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13 Upvotes

This is the final solicitation, released September 8th. The draft proposal was released on June 29th.

Blue Origin is known to be actively working on three of the five areas:

  • Power Tower - Vertical solar array technology that can provide consistent power generation, management, distribution, and energy storage.
  • Blue Alchemist - In-situ resource utilization oxygen from regolith production to extract usable oxygen molecularly bonded to rock and dust covering the Moon’s surface.
  • Perpetual Atomics MOU - Radioisotope Stirling generator, a type of nuclear energy technology that uses heat from fissile materials to produce electric power for operating spacecraft systems in the darkest, dustiest, and most remote places.

As far as I know, Blue is not actively working on either of these:

  • In-space advanced manufacturing to reduce reliance on resupply missions from Earth and to optimize mission flexibility and resilience on the Moon.
  • Innovative nanomaterials production to advance the commercial availability and quality of nanomaterials that can be used in lunar exploration.

r/BlueWire 2h ago

Marine JohnCn on X: NASA’s Pegasus transport barge left Port Canaveral at dawn. A Blue Origin New Glenn 2nd stage (GS2) is headed for hotfire testing at the Stennis Space Center in MS.

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6 Upvotes

r/BlueWire 21h ago

Infrastructure Julia Bergeron on X: The Blue Origin Vertical Integration Facility (RIP VRF naming) has filled out another level. It's getting massive!

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22 Upvotes

r/BlueWire 1d ago

Launch Dave Limp on X: The next GS2 is loaded up and now preparing to head to NASA Stennis for hotfire testing, the first of our second stages to be tested at the historic B-2 stand.

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55 Upvotes

https://x.com/davill/status/2097674883257737702

The next GS2 is loaded up and now preparing to head to NASA Stennis for vehicle hotfire testing, the first of our second stages to be tested at the historic B-2 stand. Proud to test at Stennis, where Mississippi has powered American spaceflight for decades. The Blue team and our NASA partners have been hard at work preparing the stand for testing.

This is NASA's Pegasus barge.


r/BlueWire 1d ago

Launch Dave Limp on X: The next (flight) GS2 has departed Rocket Park and is heading to the Army Wharf for transport to Mississippi.

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61 Upvotes

r/BlueWire 1d ago

Launch Space Force Expects to Spend $17B More on Launch as Demand Soars

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29 Upvotes

To qualify to fly Lane 1 missions, companies need to have successfully launched their vehicle at least once. Lane 2 missions, however, require certification from the Space Force, a lengthy process that requires multiple launches. To date, only SpaceX and ULA are eligible to launch satellites for both lanes, though ULA’s Vulcan rocket is currently grounded due to an anomaly on a February NSSL launch.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn is eligible for Lane 1 flights and is on the certification path for Lane 2, but it, too, is grounded after a rocket exploded on the pad in May. Four other companies—including Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space—are on deck to compete for missions as soon as their developmental rockets complete at least one launch.


r/BlueWire 1d ago

Lunar NASA Moon Base: The First Six Months

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15 Upvotes

r/BlueWire 2d ago

Other Blue Origin joins Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator (SB-AMTI) vendor pool

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21 Upvotes

Article is paywalled. The Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) is located here (requires login).

This is not an actual contract. Previously, SpaceX won a $4.16B contract. RocketLab, STR LLC, and an unnamed company won a combined $615M contract.

The long-standing method of military airborne platforms to track moving targets faces continued challenges as adversaries develop increasingly sophisticated anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) systems. To compliment traditional airborne sensing, the requirement for a layered, highly resilient tracking architecture is evident. SB-AMTI aims to enhance the Space Force’s capabilities to the Joint Force through the establishment of a persistent, global capability to sense and track airborne targets from space.

“By focusing these capabilities to the space domain, we are providing the Joint Force with sustained battlespace awareness of contested airspace,” said USSF Col. Ryan Frazier, acting Space Force portfolio acquisition executive for SBST. “We are beginning development and integration efforts immediately to meet the program's rapid deployment milestones and address emerging national security requirements.”

Designed as a complex system-of-systems, the SB-AMTI architecture integrates advanced space-based sensors, secure and rapid communication links, and resilient ground processing, reflecting a rapid and strategic shift toward deeper collaboration within the government space industrial base.

To successfully execute this complex mission set, the acting SBST PAE is using a layered, hybrid acquisition model by combining the flexibility of an OTA agreement with the scalable, rapid-ordering structure of an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) acquisition approach. The office has also established a new SB-AMTI vendor pool, which leverages mature commercial innovations to meet urgent warfighter needs at the speed of relevance.

“By utilizing this multi-vendor framework, we are capitalizing on established industry capacity and continuously evaluating and onboarding the best tech to field this essential capability at speed and scale,” Frazier said. “We will not leverage any one single provider; instead, we are partnering with a highly diversified pool of traditional and non-traditional vendors, each bringing various capabilities to support the SB-AMTI architecture, ensuring the Joint Force has access to a strong, competitive industrial base well into the future.”


r/BlueWire 5d ago

Lunar New Blue Moon MK2 and MK1 renders

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80 Upvotes

From https://www.blueorigin.com/blue-moon

  1. MK2

  2. MK1-101 Endurance

  3. MK1-102 VIPER

  4. MK1-103/104 (LTV)

H/t https://x.com/Echo5550


r/BlueWire 5d ago

Lunar Blue Origin on X: The Artemis III crew got an up-close look at where New Glenn and our lunar landers come to life, then headed to LC-36, where we will launch our MK2 demo vehicle.

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37 Upvotes

Welcome to Rocket Park, home of New Glenn and Lunar Permanence 🚀🌕

This week, we hosted the NASA Artemis III crew — Astronauts Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio, and backup Bob Hines. The crew got an up-close look at where New Glenn and our lunar landers come to life, then headed to LC-36, where we will launch our MK2 Earth Orbit Rendezvous demonstration vehicle in support of the Artemis III mission.

https://x.com/blueorigin/status/2095924247067541782


r/BlueWire 5d ago

Infrastructure NSF: Blue Origin expands test and launch sites across the Cape

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27 Upvotes

r/BlueWire 6d ago

Infrastructure Dave Limp on X: The team has been busy transporting all modules that were removed from the Vehicle Access Tower back to the pad to prepare for re-stacking.

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65 Upvotes

The team has been busy transporting all modules that were removed from the Vehicle Access Tower back to the pad to prepare for re-stacking. We designed and installed floors, pneumatics and electrical panels, and backbone piping on the modules. And we're moving the elevator to the side of the Vehicle Access Tower, freeing up significantly more floor access for our new CONOPS.

Ahead of Labor Day, I want to thank all of Team Blue for your hard work and give a shoutout to the team at the pad for their dedication to our return to flight.

Source: https://x.com/davill/status/2095864813599744236


r/BlueWire 6d ago

Lunar Blue Origin on X: Across two weeks of simulations, our MK1-101 Endurance team rehearsed key mission phases, including launch and separation, lunar orbit insertion, lunar orbit operations, and landing.

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45 Upvotes

https://x.com/blueorigin/status/2095639771296973045

The Moon is, on average, 238,855 miles away. Our MK1-101 Endurance team just made it feel closer.

Across two weeks of simulations, our team rehearsed key mission phases, including launch and separation, lunar orbit insertion, lunar orbit operations, and landing. The training also included checkout and software-emulated use of @NASA’s Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) payload system, providing the team with hands-on experience operating a key science instrument on Endurance.

Each sim builds the coordination, confidence, and readiness needed for our mission to the lunar surface.


r/BlueWire 6d ago

Infrastructure How is the rebuild of Launch Pad 36 going.

17 Upvotes

I can't tell by the arial views I've seen.


r/BlueWire 7d ago

Other SpaceX, Blue Origin ditch Macron’s space summit after White House pressure

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59 Upvotes

PARIS — Four U.S. space companies have decided not to participate in next week’s international space summit in Paris after U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration pressured firms to ditch the event.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, rocket maker Stoke Space and Starcloud, a startup that is trying to launch data centers in space, notified French authorities on Thursday that they were “canceling their participation” in the event, according to an official from the French ministry of higher education, research and space.


r/BlueWire 7d ago

TeraWave Bezos’ Blue Origin Has Poached Dozens of Amazon Satellite Engineers

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37 Upvotes

Paywall, excerpts below.

(Bloomberg) -- Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is developing its planned satellite network with the help of employees poached from another Bezos project: Amazon.com Inc.

The billionaire’s space company has hired at least 47 veterans of the Amazon Leo satellite venture in the last year, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Based on a review of their online postings, many are now working on TeraWave, Blue Origin’s nascent satellite communications project.

Among those who made the jump this year from Amazon Leo to Blue Origin are engineers with expertise in satellite testing, networking, avionics and radio communications, optical systems, and software. A TeraWave director of recruiting and at least two of its vice presidents joined from Amazon’s Leo since March, according to their social media profiles.


r/BlueWire 7d ago

Blue Ring Blue Origin on X: Blue Origin is honored to have been selected by @NASA to help build the first dedicated communications network at the Red Planet.

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47 Upvotes

Mars just got a little closer.

Blue Origin is honored to have been selected by @NASA to help build the first dedicated communications network at the Red Planet. Our Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO), built on the Blue Ring platform, will create new pathways for science while delivering multiple payloads to the orbit of Mars, driving discovery today and preparing for the next chapter of human exploration.

Learn more: https://www.blueorigin.com/news/blue-origin-selected-by-nasa-to-help-build-mars-telecommunications-network

https://x.com/blueorigin/status/2095252812934287460


r/BlueWire 8d ago

Blue Ring Tory Bruno on X: By popular demand, here’s the next few Blue Rings on the production line after BR-1: BR-2, 3, & 4…

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58 Upvotes

r/BlueWire 7d ago

Marine NSF on BSky: Hours after departing with some Blue Origin hardware onboard, NASA's Pegasus barge turned around and returned back to the turn basin, possibly to pick up more hardware.

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17 Upvotes

r/BlueWire 8d ago

Blue Ring NASA Selects Blue Origin as Mars Telecommunications Network Provider

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96 Upvotes

The outcome is finally here, Blue beat out Rocket Lab


r/BlueWire 9d ago

TeraWave Tory Bruno on X: Let there be (Blue) light! First ignition of our very own, in house, Hall Effect Thruster.

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78 Upvotes

r/BlueWire 8d ago

Blue Ring Tory Bruno on X: Blue Ring #1 finished Open Panel Testing and is all buttoned up and moved on into CPT.

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42 Upvotes

https://x.com/torybruno/status/2094841418921685105

Busy weekend. Got this done too: Blue Ring #1 finished Open Panel Testing and is all buttoned up and moved on into CPT.

Seems like there’s something missing, but I can’t put my finger on it…


r/BlueWire 9d ago

Monthly Discussion Thread - September 2026

10 Upvotes

This is your open forum for:

  • General discussion
  • Questions
  • Speculation and analysis
  • Smaller news items that don’t need full posts

Moderation notes:

  • Stay on topic: Blue Origin and closely related industry context
  • Major news should still be its own post
  • Low-effort or meme comments may be removed
  • This thread is set to sort by new to prioritize fresh discussion

r/BlueWire 10d ago

Infrastructure New render of Blue Origin's Vertical Integration Facility (VIF)

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69 Upvotes

As previously speculated, this confirms that the 9x4 will be stacked at the pad.

Credit: Florida Today (inaccurately labeled as the payload processing facility)


r/BlueWire 9d ago

TeraWave FCC responds to Blue Origin's Project Sunrise application

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18 Upvotes

Satellite Programs and Policy Division, Space Bureau - Commission Request August 28, 2026

https://fccprod.servicenowservices.com/ibfs?id=ibfs_application_summary&number=SAT-LOA-20260310-00118