Tue 17 August 2021:
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin filed a lawsuit against the US government over NASA’s decision to award the $2.9 billion lunar landing contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, a spokesperson said in a statement to Sputnik on Monday.
Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the world’s richest people, founded Blue Origin to pursue the dream of commercial space flight, which saw him, his brother and two other crew members blast off from Texas last month.
“Blue Origin filed suit in the US Court of Federal Claims in an attempt to remedy the flaws in the acquisition process found in NASA’s Human Landing System,” the spokesperson said. “We firmly believe that the issues identified in this procurement and its outcomes must be addressed to restore fairness, create competition, and ensure a safe return to the Moon for America.”
Blue Origin filed the lawsuit after the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) rejected protests filed by the company along with technology company Dynetics over the federal government’s decision to award SpaceX the contract to build a lunar landing system that can take astronauts to and from the moon as part of the Artemis program.
Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics have argued that Nasa was required to make multiple awards. The GAO said it “denied the protest arguments that Nasa acted improperly in making a single award to SpaceX”.
NASA was expected to select two of three companies competing for the bid: Blue Origin, SpaceX, or Dynetics.
The GAO decided that protests from Blue Origin and Dynetics were groundless, as NASA was within its rights to award the $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX to develop the first lunar landing system to be used in more than 50 years.
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