Blue Origin was founded with the vision of millions of people living and working in space to benefit Earth. Realizing this vision will require radically reducing the cost of access to space, harnessing the vast resources of the solar system, and inspiring future generations to carry this vision forward. Working backwards from this vision has resulted in Blue’s first vehicles and systems, from the New Shepard suborbital rocket, to high performance launch and in-space engines, to the reusable New Glenn heavy lift rocket. Together these systems will pave the road to space.
The first destination on that road will be the moon. Blue will set out on this journey in partnership with NASA as part of the Artemis program. Yet making this journey sustainable, and achieving the vision of a permanent human presence on the moon, will require a shift in how our nation has explored cislunar space over the last 50 years…so achieving lunar permanence will need your help.
Ben Cichy
Ben Cichy is the Senior Director of Lunar Systems Engineering and Integration at Blue Origin. In this role, he oversees and directs all technical aspects of Blue Origin’s Lunar Transportation Program. His responsibilities include technical leadership for the National Team Human Landing System, where he integrates the efforts of Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Draper Laboratories, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics. In 2023, Ben was awarded the prestigious Blue Origin Founder’s Award for his efforts.
Prior to this assignment, he held multiple lead systems and software engineering positions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. At Goddard, Ben was the Mission System Engineer at for the Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission and the Restore-L Mission (since renamed on the On-Orbit Servicing Assembly and Manufacturing 1). At JPL Ben was the Project System Engineer for the Mars 2020 mission through Mission Concept Review, the Chief Software Engineer on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, and an Entry Descent and Landing Systems Engineer on the Phoenix Mars lander. For his work Ben has been awarded two NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medals, a NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, and multiple NASA Group Achievement Awards.
Ben holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Computer Science from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, and a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.