Government Accountability Office denied the company’s protest, upholding NASA’s decision. “Historically a staunch advocate for prioritizing safety, NASA inexplicably disregarded key flight safety requirements for only SpaceX, in order to select and make award to a SpaceX proposal that assessed as tremendously high risk and immensely complex, even before the waiver of safety requirements,” Blue Origin said in the lawsuit filed in August.īlue Origin’s complaint came after the U.S. Federal Court of Claims on Wednesday released a redacted version of the lawsuit by Jeff Bezos‘ Blue Origin against NASA over the lucrative lunar lander contract awarded to Elon Musk’s SpaceX earlier this year. In the meantime, NASA has granted a total of $146 million in fixed-price awards to Blue Origin, SpaceX, Dynetics, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman through a follow-up program aimed at boosting the space agency’s lunar landing capabilities.The U.S. The court is expected to hear oral arguments in October, with an eye toward issuing a ruling by early November. The judge in the case, Richard Hertling, agreed with SpaceX on the redaction issue. SpaceX also says the unredacted version of Blue Origin’s complaint should remain sealed because it would disclose SpaceX’s proprietary and confidential information. In one of its responses to the complaint, SpaceX says Blue Origin is relying on a “flawed interpretation” of NASA’s solicitation - an interpretation that was “unfortunately adopted by GAO” in its ruling. “Had it had such an opportunity, Blue Origin would have been able to propose a substantially lower price…” “Blue Origin and Dynetics did not get such a chance to compete with waived requirements the Agency afforded to SpaceX,” it says. The lawsuit argues that issuing the waivers for individual flight readiness reviews and “other review requirements” for the supporting spacecraft gave SpaceX an unfair advantage in the competition. The details about those supporting spacecraft were blacked out by the court. The GAO largely sided with NASA and SpaceX in a ruling that let the contract award stand, but then Blue Origin took the dispute to federal court.īlue Origin’s lawsuit touches on the aforementioned talking points, but it primarily focuses on waivers that NASA issued relating to “supporting spacecraft” that are apparently used in connection with SpaceX’s landing system. In a protest filed with the Government Accountability Office, Blue Origin complained that NASA didn’t evaluate the proposals properly, and that SpaceX was given a chance to restructure its bid to fit NASA’s budget. But space agency officials said Congress appropriated only enough money to make one award. The original hope was that NASA might make multiple awards, in the interest of promoting competition and having a Plan B. Draper’s proposal was even more expensive. SpaceX had the low bid, with Blue Origin’s team proposing $5.9 billion for its landing system. The filings focus on NASA’s April decision to award SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to develop its Starship super-rocket as the landing system for the Artemis program’s first crewed trip to the lunar surface, planned for as early as 2024.Īt the time, NASA said that SpaceX’s proposal was technically superior to the concepts offered by Blue Origin and its partners - Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper - and by another competitor, Dynetics. The court also shared redacted responses from SpaceX. Court of Federal Appeals released the 59-page text of the Blue Origin-led industry consortium’s complaint, which was filed in August. Redacted versions of documents relating to Blue Origin’s federal lawsuit against the federal government and SpaceX lay out further details about the dispute over a multibillion-dollar NASA lunar lander contract, but the details that are left out are arguably just as intriguing. An artist’s conception shows SpaceX’s Starship rocket ship on the moon.
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