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Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin was sole bidder for $190M NASA contract to deliver Houston-built VIPER rover to moon

By Jishnu Nair – Reporter, Houston Business Journal
Sep 24, 2025

A space company belonging to one of the world’s richest men will ferry a Houston-built rover to the moon in 2027.

NASA awarded a $190 million task order to Blue Origin last week to ferry the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, to the moon’s surface. The award caps off a yearlong saga after NASA initially pulled the plug on VIPER in July 2024 and began seeking private industry proposals to fly the craft.

A NASA spokesperson told the Houston Business Journal this week that Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin was the sole bidder from the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services vendor pool to fly VIPER. Blue Origin is owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder and former CEO of Amazon.

“NASA solicited proposals from the CLPS vendor pool and received one proposal for this delivery,” NASA said in a statement. “The agency evaluated the submission in accordance with standard procurement procedures and determined it met NASA’s requirements, leading to this award.”

Under the terms of the deal, Blue Origin will fly VIPER using its Blue Moon Mark 1, or MK1, lunar lander, which is built and integrated in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Blue Origin has not flown the Mark 1 yet, but it will launch a $6.1 million CLPS mission using MK1 later this year.

A Blue Origin representative directed the HBJ to statements the company made on X, formerly Twitter, describing MK-1 as “well-suited” for VIPER. NASA said its intent is not to physically modify the rover, which was assembled in June 2024 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, so any needed modifications would have to be made to Blue Origin’s lander.