Hi, it’s Fortune Tech Fellow Andrea Guzman bringing today's Data Sheet to you.
The tech mogul space race is heating up, with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk each notching victories this week.
Blue Origin, the private space company founded by Bezos, announced on Thursday that it won a contract from NASA that will send it on a mission to Mars.
Blue Origin’s rocket will head for Mars’ orbit to measure magnetic fields. The interplanetary contract is a first for Blue Origin, whose New Glenn vehicle has yet to launch and is competing against vehicles being developed by Musk’s SpaceX. On Wednesday, SpaceX successfully fired up 31 of the 33 engines on the Super Heavy booster in a critical test that bodes well for the Starship the company hopes will one day carry people to Mars.
Last week, Fortune’s Tristan Bove positioned Elon Musk as the man in the lead of the private space business, noting that in 2021, SpaceX beat out competition from Blue Origin to secure a $2.9 billion government contract to fly NASA astronauts to the moon with its Starship rocket by 2025.
“Because of Starship’s reusability and powerful engines, SpaceX could dominate space exploration for decades to come,” Bove wrote.
Blue Origin’s bet to rival SpaceX and others is with New Glenn, a vehicle that has hit snags in recent years with a launch date.
Its first launch was scheduled for 2020 and got pushed back to the following year, then delayed again to 2022. In late March last year, Blue Origin’s SVP for New Glenn said it wouldn’t happen by the year’s end. This time around, it’s aiming for a late 2024 departure from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida with NASA’s dual-spacecraft ESCAPADE mission.
The value of the contract is unclear. Reuters reports that NASA called that information proprietary and Blue Origin declined to discuss financial details.
But Blue Origin is part of an initiative known as the Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare missions program, where NASA assigns its lower-cost missions to rockets that don’t have a proven track record. Under that program, 13 companies are splitting $300 million for a variety of noncritical missions.
“These small satellites and Class D payloads tolerate relatively high risk and serve as an ideal platform for technical and architecture innovation,” NASA said when announcing the award.
So, NASA’s prepared for the risk. If all goes well, New Glenn will spend 11 months traveling to Mars and a few more months after that gathering information.
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Andrea Guzman
