Blue Origin pauses space tourism flights to focus on the moon

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, announced it is pausing its space tourism flights for at least two years to concentrate resources on lunar missions. This decision temporarily halts the New Shepard program, which has flown humans past the Kármán line—the recognized boundary of space—over the past five years. The pause comes just weeks before the anticipated third launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn mega-rocket, initially planned to carry a robotic lunar lander. However, the lander is still undergoing testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The move aligns with the U.S. government’s renewed focus, under President Donald Trump, on returning astronauts to the moon and establishing a sustained lunar presence, opening opportunities for companies beyond SpaceX to compete for lunar missions. Since its first flight over a decade ago, New Shepard has completed 38 missions, carrying 98 humans and over 200 scientific payloads, primarily serving space tourism and research purposes. Unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9, New Shepard was