UPDATE 2-Blue Origin shutters New Shepard rocket program to focus on moon lander development

Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin on Friday said it ‌was "pausing" flights of its New Shepard rocket for at least two years, effectively cancelling the company's centerpiece space tourism vehicle to focus instead on efforts ⁠to build a moon lander for NASA. Blue Origin will "pause its New Shepard flights and shift resources to further accelerate development of the company's human lunar capabilities," the company said in a statement.

Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin on Friday said it ‌was "pausing" flights of its New Shepard rocket for at least two years, effectively cancelling the company's centerpiece space tourism vehicle to focus instead on efforts ⁠to build a moon lander for NASA.

Blue Origin will "pause its New Shepard flights and shift resources to further accelerate development of the company's human lunar capabilities," the company said in a statement. Standing 60 feet tall, the reusable ​New Shepard rocket has launched dozens of paying passengers and research experiments from Texas across 38 brief, ‍suborbital flights to the edge of space since 2021.

With its debut launch in 2015, New Shepard was Blue Origin's first rocket, designed to launch some 70 miles high and return to land vertically on a slab of concrete. That landing technique would ⁠later ‌help Blue Origin develop New ⁠Glenn, its heavy-lift orbital-class rocket that rivals launchers from Elon Musk's SpaceX and lands in a similar vertical fashion after boosting ‍a payload to orbit.

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp announced the decision internally to employees on Friday in an email ​that began, "I have some significant news to share with you," according to a copy seen ⁠by Reuters. "New Shepard has achieved great success and will forever be our first step," Limp said, adding "the decision to pause is not one ⁠that I take lightly."

"We will redirect our people and resources toward further acceleration of our human lunar capabilities inclusive of New Glenn," Limp said. The New Shepard decision came as a surprise to some ⁠Blue Origin employees, and it is widely seen as a cancellation of the program, company staff told Reuters, ⁠speaking anonymously.

Blue Origin ‌has a $3.6 billion contract with NASA that helps fund development of Blue Moon, a lunar lander that is on deck to send U.S. astronauts to the ⁠lunar surface later this decade, alongside SpaceX's Starship lander.

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