Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin Making Big Spaceflight Announcement Today

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder and CEO of Amazon.com, is also the founder of the private commercial spaceflight company Blue Origin.
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder and CEO of Amazon.com, is also the founder of the private commercial spaceflight company Blue Origin. (Image credit: 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.

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!

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook

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Mike Wall
Senior Space Writer

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.