Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos, is pausing its space tourism flights for no less than two years. The company announced this decision on Friday, stating it will focus all of its resources on upcoming missions to the moon. This temporary halt affects the program Blue Origin has used for the last five years to fly humans past the Kármán line, the recognized boundary of space.
The announcement comes just a few weeks ahead of the expected third launch of its New Glenn mega-rocket, which is slated for late February. Blue Origin had previously suggested it would use this launch to send a robotic lunar lander to the moon. However, that spacecraft is still undergoing testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.
Since retaking office, President Donald Trump has pressured NASA to send astronauts back to the moon before the end of his second term. This has cleared the way for companies other than SpaceX to compete for these lunar missions. In its statement, Blue Origin wrote that the decision reflects its commitment to the nation’s goal of returning to the moon and establishing a permanent, sustained lunar presence.
Blue Origin first flew its New Shepard rocket more than a decade ago. It became the first rocket to go to space and safely land back on Earth. Unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the New Shepard rocket was never intended to reach Earth orbit. Its utility has therefore been limited to space tourism flights, which offer passengers around four minutes of weightlessness in the company’s space capsule, and to science missions.
The company stated that New Shepard has flown 38 times, carrying 98 humans to space along with more than 200 scientific and research payloads.
The New Shepard program was previously paused in 2022 after one of the company’s boosters exploded mid-flight. There were no humans on that mission, and the capsule safely ejected away from the booster. New Shepard remained grounded until late 2023 while Blue Origin worked on identifying and fixing the cause of the anomaly.