Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin protests NASA’s $2.9 billion Moon contract with SpaceX
Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin is fighting NASA’s decision to award SpaceX $2.9 billion to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024. NASA’s Human Landing System program, which funded the development of three rival lunar lander prototypes (including Blue Origin’s), was expected to pick two of those landers in April. But NASA opted for just one — SpaceX’s Starship — because of short funding from Congress.
Blue Origin’s 175-page protest, filed with the Government Accountability Office less than two weeks after SpaceX won the contract, accuses NASA of misjudging several parts of its proposal for Blue Moon, the lunar lander it’s developing with a “National Team” of established space and defense contractors: Northrop Grumman, Lockheed...