Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith is retiring at the end of the year and his replacement is coming from Jeff Bezos’ other company.
Dave Limp, an Amazon veteran who had planned to step down from his role as head of the company;s consumer devices division, is taking over the CEO spot. Limp, who was the company’s Senior Vice President of devices and services for more than 13 years, had overseen the development and rollout of numerous products including Echo and Alexa as well as Amazon’s line of Fire tablet.
The executive shuffling was first reported by CNBC which viewed internal memos between Smith and Bezos.
Blue Origin is in the midst of juggling a number of space projects, including the launch of its next-gen rocket and returning its New Shepard space tourism rocket to flight. The space company also is working on a $34.7 million contract awarded by NASA to continue advancing its solution to process solar cells from lunar regolith. Blue Origin has said this process “would bootstrap unlimited electricity and power transmission cables anywhere on the surface of the Moon.”
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