Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin wins NASA contract to build astronaut lunar lander

Blue Origin plans to take astronauts back to the Moon on its Blue Moon lander. (AP: Blue Origin)

A team led by Jeff Bezos's rocket company has won a coveted $US3.4 billion ($5.1 billion) NASA contract to build a spacecraft to fly astronauts to the Moon's surface, the US space agency says.

It was a breakthrough for Blue Origin two years after it lost out to Elon Musk's SpaceX in another competition.