This afternoon, Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight venture Blue Origin is set to make a big announcement about... something. The company hasn’t provided any details yet, but speculation is high that the announcement will be related to Blue Origin’s plans to explore the Moon. The only clue we have about this event is a cryptic tweet that Blue Origin sent out on April 26th. The tweet shows a picture of a ship surrounded by ice, with the caption “5.9.19.” Sharp-eyed space fans were quick to point out that the ship in the picture was explorer Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance. Shackleton famously led expeditions to the Antarctic in the early 1900s, and because of his exploits, a site on the south pole of the Moon was named the Shackleton crater. That’s why many think today’s Blue Origin announcement will have lunar leanings. The Shackleton crater has often been considered an attractive landing site for future lunar exploration. NASA and others are eager to visit the south pole of the Moon, as many scientists believe the area might be awash in water ice. If there’s enough ice present, it could be mined and turned into drinking water, rocket fuel, and more that could help sustain a human presence on the surface of the Moon. The image of the Endurance surrounded by ice may be a nod to that. The Shackleton crater is also enticing because there are some areas near the site that receive constant sunlight. That’s unusual, as most other areas of the Moon experience a two-week lunar daytime followed by a two-week lunar nighttime. This makes exploring the Moon difficult since many spacecraft rely on solar power as their main energy source, and it can be hard to maintain power through two weeks of cold and darkness. Cryptic pictures aside, this would be a good time for a Moon-related announcement, given the fact that the US is very focused on getting back to the lunar surface soon. In December 2017, President Trump signed his first Space Policy Directive that called on NASA to put humans back on the Moon. In March 2019, Vice President Mike Pence challenged the space agency to fulfill this goal by 2024, four years earlier than NASA had originally planned. That means NASA is going to need a lot of hardware fast to pull off this task — most notably, lunar landers that can carry people to the Moon. Today’s announcement may revolve around the vehicles that Blue Origin plans to make to explore the Moon, which could serve as a pitch to NASA about what the company is capable of achieving. However, if today’s announcement is about the next step in lunar exploration, the picture that Blue Origin shared is somewhat foreboding. Shackleton’s vessel Endurance did not have a successful mission to Antarctica. In 1915, the ship got stuck in sea ice in the Weddell Sea, and it was eventually crushed. The crew of the vessel survived for months camped out on the ice before escaping to an island using three lifeboats. It took several rescue attempts to eventually save the crew. Let’s hope that the picture is meant to represent Shackleton and perhaps the lunar ice that Blue Origin may be aiming for on the Moon. We should get more details at 4PM ET today. There’s no word yet on whether there will be a live stream, but we will update this post if we get one.<doc-sep>Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder and CEO of Amazon.com, is also the founder of the private commercial spaceflight company Blue Origin. Update for May 9: Jeff Bezos unveiled Blue Origin's new Blue Moon lunar lander for missions to the moon. See our full coverage here. Original story: Jeff Bezos will reveal some news today (May 9) about the final frontier. The world's richest man will speak to the media at 4 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) in Washington, D.C., about his spaceflight company, Blue Origin . During the event, "we will give you an update on our progress and share our vision of going to space to benefit Earth," Blue Origin representatives said in a media advisory. They didn't provide any further details. But there's reason to suspect the topic may be lunar exploration. On April 26, Blue Origin tweeted a photo of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton's ship, the Endurance, along with the digits "5.9.19" — a reference to today's date. Related: New Glenn: Blue Origin's Reusable Rocket Shackleton's name graces a crater at the moon's south pole that's thought to harbor lots of water ice on its permanently shadowed floor. Indeed, the Shackleton Crater region is often floated as a good spot for a lunar outpost. 5.9.19 pic.twitter.com/BzvwCsDM2TApril 26, 2019 See more And Blue Origin is interested in the moon. The company is developing a lunar lander called Blue Moon , which will be able to deliver about 5 tons (4.5 metric tons) of payload to the moon's surface. Blue Origin is also working on a rocket called New Armstrong, about which very little is known. But the names the company chooses for its vehicles tend to reveal their destinations. For example, Blue Origin calls its suborbital spaceflight system New Shepard , after NASA astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American to reach suborbital space. The company's orbital rocket is New Glenn, which honors John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. And New Armstrong is, obviously, named after Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon. Space.com will be at today's event, so we'll see in a few hours if this speculation was on target or not. Stay tuned!<doc-sep>Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon and the world's richest man, is set to bring his private space firm out of the dark at an event on Thursday. Blue Origin is a privately funded space company which, similar to Elon Musk's SpaceX, focuses on reusable vertical takeoff and vertical landing rockets. But unlike those of SpaceX, to date Blue Origin's launches have all been sub-orbital, poking into the very edges of the Earth's atmosphere, but have not gone high enough to enter into orbit or to completely escape the pull of the planet's gravity. :: Who's winning battle of space race billionaires? Image: The rocket could take paying passengers to the edge of space next year. Pic: Blue Origin Mr Bezos is scheduled to speak at an event in Washington DC on Thursday to announce the company's progress in a very rare media briefing. Advertisement Blue Origin's executives have claimed the company's space tourism business would start delivering trips into space this year. The firm also received a relatively miniscule $23m (£17m) from NASA, alongside the United Launch Alliance, to test using cryogenic liquid as a method of propulsion for a lunar lander system. These sub-orbital launches have left Blue Origin trailing as a competitive aerospace company behind firms which are putting satellites into orbit. While private sector competitors - including from fellow billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX - have been the driving force in orbital launches in recent years, Blue Origin is targeting the space tourist market. The market for giving very wealthy passengers the opportunity to experience weightlessness for a brief period is not the same as that for resupply missions for the International Space Station and satellite launches. Historically space exploration, especially orbital launches which involve the spacecraft going high enough to complete an orbit of the Earth, has been so expensive and offered such uncertain returns on investment that it could only be funded by states. Today private sector launches dominate the orbital launch numbers. To potentially approach this market, an orbital launch vehicle called New Glenn has been announced by Blue Origin. New Glenn has not yet been seen in public or received a test flight, which the company has suggested could take place in 2021. It took rival firm SpaceX years of testing before its reusable Falcon 9 rockets were trusted enough to allow it to win contracts from NASA and private sector businesses which wanted to launch satellites. Data analysis by Sky News shows that, since the 1990s, the private sector has driven investment in space exploration while states decreased the number of launches they were undertaking. Sir ‎Richard Branson's commercial space ventures, Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit, are also hunting new funds after halting a $1bn (£775m) Saudi-funded deal after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The satellite launch service Virgin Orbit was formed in 2017 and aims to launch small satellites from a converted Boeing 747-400 aircraft.<doc-sep>This image was taken during the first drive of NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars on March 4, 2021. The team has spent the weeks since landing checking out the rover to prepare for surface operations. Why we are going to Mars Four astronauts from three countries are preparing to leave Earth this week aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, marking the third-ever crewed flight for Elon Musk's company, and the first from SpaceX to make use of a previously flown rocket booster and spacecraft. CNN's Rachel Crane reports from Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins is helped out of the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft onboard the SpaceX GO Navigator recovery ship after he, NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi, landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, Sunday, May 2, 2021. NASA's SpaceX Crew-1 mission was the first crew rotation flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket with astronauts to the International Space Station as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Program. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) WENCHANG, CHINA - APRIL 23: A Long March-5B Y2 rocket carrying the core module of China's space station, Tianhe, stands at the launching area of the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on April 23, 2021 in Wenchang, Hainan Province of China. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images) Snapshot from the first full STARFORGE simulation. Nicknamed the "Anvil of Creation," a giant molecular cloud with individual star formation and comprehensive feedback, including protostellar jets, radiation, stellar winds and core-collapse supernovae. What it's like to walk 220 miles above Earth Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announces Blue Moon, a lunar landing vehicle for the Moon, during a Blue Origin event in Washington, DC, May 9, 2019. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) (CNN Business) — Jeff Bezos may be ready to bring Blue Origin, his secretive space company, out of the shadows. The firm has spent two decades quietly designing and testing new rocket technologies that Bezos hopes will help usher in a science fiction future where millions of people live and work among the stars. The Amazon (AMZN) CEO and world’s wealthiest person recently described Blue Origin as the “most important work” he’s doing. But so far he’s mostly forgone flashy announcements, and instead has encouraged employees to adopt mantras like “slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” Things are different this week. Blue Origin is hosting a rare event with media in Washington, DC, on Thursday. Bezos himself is scheduled to speak, but it’s not entirely clear what will be discussed. The invitations said that Bezos plans to give an update on Blue Origin’s “progress and share our vision of going to space to benefit Earth.” Spokespeople for Blue Origin declined to share further details. The only other clue is a cryptic tweet that includes the date of the event along with a photo of “Endurance,” the ill-fated ship that left explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew stranded during an expedition to Antarctica in 1915. (A crater on the moon’s south pole is also named for Shackleton, a hint that Bezos’ speech could have a lunar focus.) There are a few reasons Blue Origin may be hankering for media attention: Executives have said Blue Origin’s space tourism business will be up and running this year; its massive New Glenn rocket could ready to fly in 2021; and Bezos has been more open in recent months about plans to ferry cargo to the moon and set up a base on its surface. The billionaire space race Bezos isn’t the only billionaire with a space company. Elon Musk and Richard Branson started their own businesses in the early 2000s, too. The men have been credited with helping to usher in a new era of spaceflight by pouring money into projects once considered too risky or expensive for the private sector. Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has enjoyed the lion’s share of media attention. It’s led the charge by developing cheap reusable rockets that now regularly haul satellites to orbit. The company also wins high-profile contracts with NASA and the military, and it’s touted bold plans for colonizing Mars. British serial entrepreneur Richard Branson has also wielded his signature showmanship to promote Virgin Galactic, a space tourism venture that hundreds of customers have already lined up for. It could open for business this year. Branson has also publicized longer-term goals like offering rocket-powered flights between cities. Blue Origin may have kept the lowest profile. But its plans are no less ambitious. The startup has launched nearly a dozen demo flights of its New Shepard rocket, which is designed to send tourists on scenic trips to the thermosphere. Its first crewed launch could be just a few months away, an executive said during a test launch webcast last week. And then there’s New Glenn, which competes for lucrative satellite launch contracts and could start flying in a couple of years. Bezos’ enormous e-commerce fortune could give Blue Origin a leg up in the billionaire space race. Bezos has said he fills Blue Origin’s coffers by selling about $1 billion worth of his Amazon stock each year. The company hasn’t worried about courting investors. SpaceX has padded Musk’s early investments by raising huge amounts of venture capital dollars and landing big launch contracts. It’s worth an estimated $30 billion. But if investors get nervous about SpaceX’s expensive gambles on new technologies or the economy goes south, things could get rocky. Branson’s space company, meanwhile, has been hungry for cash since it turned down a $1 billion investment from Saudi Arabia last year after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed at a Saudi consulate. Virgin has since hired a finance firm to help find new backers, Sky News reported in February.<doc-sep>
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, is slated to give a mysterious talk in Washington, DC on Thursday afternoon. Bezos will be speaking about his spaceflight company, Blue Origin, to provide "an update on our progress and share our vision of going to space to benefit Earth." Two photos that Blue Origin shared ahead of the announcement suggest Bezos will discuss a moon-mission concept. NASA said in April that it wants to fund a large, private lunar lander to get its astronauts to and from the moon, ideally as soon as 2024. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Jeff Bezos is in Washington, DC, where he's supposed to deliver a relatively rare and as-yet mysterious talk about Blue Origin, the Amazon billionaire's spaceflight company. The event kicks off on Thursday at 4 p.m. ET, and it's slated to last about 90 minutes. Invitations sent to journalists say Bezos and his company "will give an update on our progress and share our vision of going to space to benefit Earth." This could describe almost any presentation about Blue Origin by Bezos, who has said many times in the past few years that he'd like to make space a place where a trillion people can live and work. "We'd have 1,000 Mozarts, and 1,000 Einsteins. Think how incredible and dynamic that civilization will be," he said in March. But there are some telling clues as to what Bezos's talk might be about: a moon mission, or at least the hardware designed to pull it off. Why Bezos might present an updated 'Blue Moon' lunar lander concept A famous "Earthrise" photo taken by Apollo 8 astronauts during their trip around the moon on Dec. 24, 1968. NASA Bezos is practiced at keeping secrets about Blue Origin, as are his employees. Until several years after its founding in 2000, few people outside the company even knew it existed. The ensuing years brought few details about what it was toiling over in the deserts of West Texas. (Even members of a fire department near the company's launch site were reportedly asked to sign nondisclosure agreements.) Blue Origin's motto is "gradatim ferociter," which is Latin for "step by step, ferociously." If SpaceX's Elon Musk is a noisy hare in the new space race, then Blue Origin's Bezos is something of a taciturn tortoise. In recent years, Bezos has opened up much more about Blue, as space industry insiders often call the company. He's primarily spoken at ticketed private events, niche spaceflight conferences, and other relatively controlled environments. His talks typically cover the same ground, with some occasional news and unmistakable ribbing of competitors like Musk. Thursday's event looks to be something different and potentially significant. The company has invited an unknown number of media outlets, but an informal count by Business Insider suggests dozens. Two photo clues that Blue Origin shared are also noteworthy. To its emailed invitation, the company attached an "Earthrise" photo taken by NASA astronauts during Apollo 8, with overlaying promotional text. About a week earlier, on April 26, Blue Origin also issued a cryptic tweet that said only "5.9.19" and shared an image of a ship sailing amid a raft of jagged sea ice. The photo symbolizes the spirit of human exploration: It was taken during the expedition of Earnest Shackleton circa 1915, as his crew attempted to reach Antarctica. (The ship got stuck in ice for months and later sank, though the crew survived.) Although explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew in 1914 sailed for Antarctica in the "Endurance," shown here, their ship got trapped by sea ice in 1915 and later sank. Public domain Shackleton is also the name of a crater at the lunar South Pole. Recent studies suggest water may exist as ice there, perhaps under a thin layer of lunar soil, exposed to the surface in permanently shadowed regions (where the sun can't warm it up and evaporate the water into space), or maybe both. Lunar water is seen as a game-changing resource not just because it might help support a moon base. With a little solar or nuclear energy, water molecules can be split into hydrogen and oxygen, which can fuel a rocket's rapid flight to other destinations in the solar system. Blue Origin has teased the idea of a "large lunar lander" called Blue Moon over the past two years, and a concept to use it to deliver supplies to the surface has also leaked out.