Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin on Monday announced it wants to launch a space station that will house up to 10 people in the second half of the decade, as the race to commercialize the cosmos heats up.

"Orbital Reef," described in a press statement as a mixed-use business park in space that will support microgravity research and manufacturing, is a joint venture with commercial space company Sierra Space and has the support of Boeing and Arizona State University.

"For over sixty years, NASA and other space agencies have developed orbital space flight and space habitation, setting us up for commercial business to take off in this decade," said Blue Origin executive Brent Sherwood.

"We will expand access, lower the cost, and provide all the services and amenities needed to normalize space flight.

NASA's uncrewed Artemis 1 mission to the moon is on track to launch in February, the U.S. space agency said.

The Orion spacecraft was secured this week atop the powerful Space Launch System rocket at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, meaning the mission was entering its final phase of preparations.

For its flight next year, Orion will swing around the moon without astronauts on board.

It will be a critical test of the Artemis program, which aims to land astronauts on the moon by 2024 and establish a sustained human presence there by 2028, part of the U.S. government's ambitious efforts to get people to Mars in the 2030s.

Artemis has been hit by delays, and even top NASA officials have conceded that the targets will be difficult to meet.

A specific launch date for Artemis 1 will be set after "wet dress rehearsal," a test set for early next year in which the liquid propellants are filled into the massive next-generation rocket, which at 98 meters stands taller than the Statue of Liberty.

The United States remains the only country to have put humans on Earth's nearest neighbor.