Blue Origin protest against NASA’s SpaceX lunar lander contract is rejected

“NASA’s announcement provided that the number of awards the agency would award was dependent on the amount available for the program,” the announcement said. In addition, the announcement retained the right to make multiple awards, a single award, or no award at all. Upon reaching its award decision, NASA concluded that it only had sufficient funding for one contract award. GAO further concluded that there was no requirement for NASA to participate in discussions, modify or cancel the announcement due to the amount of funding available for the program. As a result, GAO denied the protest arguments that NASA had acted incorrectly in making a single grant to SpaceX.”

“Finally, GAO agreed with the protestors that NASA waived a requirement of the announcement for SpaceX in a limited case. Despite this finding, the decision also concludes that the protesters could not identify a reasonable possibility of competitive disadvantage as a result of this limited discrepancy in the evaluation.”

Both Blue Origin and Dynetics argued in their complaints that NASA had not properly evaluated their bids, and urged the space agency to reconsider. The government had 100 days to decide whether the protests were justified.

Bounce back against such contract decisions is common, especially in the aerospace industry, where NASA and the US military are key customers for rocket builders and winning or losing awards can have a huge impact on bottom line.

“We firmly believe that there were fundamental issues with NASA’s decision, but the GAO was unable to address them due to their limited jurisdiction,” said a spokesperson for Blue Origin. “We will continue to advocate for two direct providers because we believe this is the right solution. We have been encouraged by actions in Congress to add a second provider and appropriate additional resources to NASA’s drive to bring Americans back to the moon.”

The company said it was also very encouraged by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson’s comments “in the past week, which reaffirm NASA’s original intent to provide concurrent competition. The Human Landing System program must now have competition in place.” from later – that’s the best solution for NASA and the best solution for our country.”

The space agency sees the GAO decision as a way to move forward with the SpaceX contract and return humans to the moon. The decision allows NASA and SpaceX to “establish a timeline for the first manned landing on the moon in more than 50 years,” according to NASA.

Facing the challenges of the past year, NASA and its partners have made significant achievements to move Artemis forward, including a successful hot-fire test for the Space Launch System rocket. An unmanned flight of Artemis I is on track for this year and a manned Artemis II mission is scheduled for 2023.

“NASA is making rapid progress, but astronaut safety is the priority and the agency will not sacrifice crew safety in steadfast pursuit of the goal of establishing a long-term presence on the moon.”

The agency also said its officials would provide an update shortly on the future of the Artemis program, the human landing system and the proposed return to the Moon and continue to work with the Biden administration, Congress and commercial partners to develop a sustainable future. approach to lunar exploration. .

Blue Origin had proposed working as a “National Team” for the HLS program with frequent government contractors such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to design a lunar lander dedicated to the maintenance of the space station, called Gateway, that NASA plans to orbit the moon. Dynetics came up with a similar proposal.

However, SpaceX suggested using its Starship, a massive spaceship and rocket system that is currently in the early stages of development in South Texas. SpaceX’s primary goal for Starship is to bring humans to Mars, but the company suggested using a modified version for NASA’s Artemis lunar program.

While the vehicle will theoretically be able to take astronauts from Earth directly to the lunar surface, NASA plans to use the vehicle along with its own rocket and spacecraft: the SLS, or Space Launch System, and Orion.

NASA officials said at a news conference earlier this year that under the current plan, SLS will take astronauts to the orbit of the moon, and then the crew will transfer to the Gateway space station, and from there, SpaceX’s Starship will send the astronauts to the surface of the Moon. the moon.