Rumors of Blue Origin's lunar designs took off on April 26, when the company issued a cryptic tweet giving today's date, paired with an image of explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship the Endurance, part of his troubled 1914 journey across Antarctica.

But the company had quietly been laying a groundwork for months. Since last fall, Blue Origin has advertised jobs in lunar lander design, filed a request to trademark the term “Blue Moon”, and announced that it is co-sponsoring a moon race along the lines of the former Google Lunar Xprize. The company even features the moon in its coat of arms.

“It’s time for America to return to the moon—this time to stay,” Bretton Alexander, Blue Origin’s