Photos: Atlas 5 rolls out for launch

Blue Origin, the rocket company owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, has won a $3.4 billion NASA contract to build an Artemis lunar lander that will provide a downstream alternative to the Starship variant already being developed by SpaceX, the agency announced Friday.

Boeing Co. and SpaceX, selected by NASA last month to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, can resume development of their human-rated spacecraft after officials ordered a work stoppage prompted by a protest by Sierra Nevada Corp., the company left out of the contracts.

These photos taken Friday evening show the mobile gantry being wheeled away from a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket at Cape Canaveral, hours before its scheduled blastoff with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.