Jeff Bezos’ space tourism and rocket company is replacing its chief executive officer with a longtime Amazon executive. The current Blue Origin CEO, Bob Smith — a former Honeywell executive who took over the role in 2017 — will step down and make way for Dave Limp, the senior vice president of devices and services at Amazon, a spokesperson for Blue Origin said in a statement Monday. In the statement, Blue Origin said that Limp is “a proven innovator with a customer-first mindset.
However, Smith will stay on through January 2 “to ensure a smooth transition,” according to the statement. Blue Origin has worked for more than a decade to develop a suborbital rocket and spacecraft, called New Shepard, that is capable of taking paying customers and scientific experiments to the edge of space. The company’s first successful crewed spaceflight carried Bezos as one of the passengers in 2021. New Shepard has since completed five additional missions with people on board.