Blue Origin pauses space tourism flights to focus on the moon

Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos, announced on Friday that it will suspend its space tourism flights for "no less than two years" as it redirects its resources toward upcoming lunar missions.

The move temporarily halts a program Blue Origin has used for the past five years to fly people beyond the Kármán line, the internationally recognised boundary of space.

The announcement comes just weeks before the anticipated third launch of Blue Origin's New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, which is currently scheduled for late February. The company had previously indicated that this third New Glenn mission could be used to send its robotic lunar lander toward the moon. However, the spacecraft is still undergoing testing at NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Texas.

Since returning to the office, Donald Trump has pressured NASA to return American astronauts to the moon before the end of his second term. That push has opened the door for companies beyond SpaceX to compete for future lunar missions.

"The decision reflects Blue Origin's commitment to the nation's goal of returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent, sustained lunar presence," the company said in its statement on Friday.

Blue Origin first launched its New Shepard rocket more than a decade ago, making history as the first rocket to reach space and safely land back on Earth. Unlike SpaceX's Falcon 9, however, New Shepard was never designed to reach Earth orbit. As a result, its role has been limited to suborbital missions, including space tourism flights that offer passengers roughly four minutes of weightlessness and scientific research missions.

According to Blue Origin, the New Shepard program has completed 38 flights to date, carrying 98 people to space and transporting more than 200 scientific and research payloads.

The New Shepard program was previously grounded in 2022 after one of the rocket's boosters exploded during flight. No crew members were onboard at the time, and the capsule successfully separated from the booster and returned safely. Following the incident, New Shepard remained grounded until late 2023 while Blue Origin investigated the cause of the failure and implemented corrective measures.