Blue Origin, the space tourism and exploration company founded by Amazon.com owner Jeff Bezos, has announced plans to build a ‘mixed-used business park’ in space.
The company has agreed to partner with Sierra Space, a designer and manufacturer of rocket engines and components, to build the outpost named ‘Orbital Reef’.
The 32,000 sq ft station will operate in the low Earth orbit, anywhere between 1000kilometres and 160km in the sky, and be designed to serve as a mixed-used business park.
Orbital Reef aims to be operational before 2030.
According to Blue Origin, Orbital Reef will “offer research, industrial, international, and commercial customers the cost competitive end-to-end services.”
“The Orbital Reef business model makes it easy for customers and is strategically designed to support a diverse portfolio of uses.”
“The team has all the services and systems to meet the needs of emergent customers, including researchers, manufacturers, and visitors.”
The announcement comes as Nasa searches for proposals to replace the 20-year-old International Space Station, which is in desperate need of repairs.
In July this year, Blue Origin had missed out on a lucrative Nasa contract, worth US$2.9bn, to SpaceX and Elon Musk.