Jeff Bezos’ attempt to challenge NASA’s awarding of a USD2.9 billion Moon lander programme to SpaceX has been dealt a massive blow when the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) denied his protest.
Shortly after NASA awarded the contract to the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX earlier this year, Blue Origin and Dynetics filed protests against the decision. It said NASA was required to award contracts to multiple companies in accordance with its initial stated preference. It also said that NASA never initiated talks with the company to try to negotiate the price of its human landing system. The space agency expected the project to cost USD6 billion.
However, NASA said it only chose one company because of budgetary cuts by the Congress for the program.
In a statement, GAO said: ““GAO first concluded that NASA did not violate procurement law or regulation when it decided to make only one award.
“The announcement reserved the right to make multiple awards, a single award, or no award at all. In reaching its award decision, NASA concluded that it only had sufficient funding for one contract award.
“There was no requirement for NASA to engage in discussions, amend, or cancel the announcement as a result of the amount of funding available for the programme.”
Musk welcomed the decision by tweeting ‘GAO’ with a flexing bicep emoji.
Bezos, who recently returned from his flight to space on July 20, had last week offered NASA a discount of up to USD2 billion to give Blue Origin the human lunar landing system (HLS) contract.
In an open letter to the NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, the Amazon founder said that his company would close US space agency’s near-term budgetary shortfall and producing a safe and sustainable lander for Americans to return to the Moon.
A Blue Origin spokesperson said the company will “continue to advocate for two immediate providers as we believe it is the right solution”.
It added in a statement: “We stand firm in our belief that there were fundamental issues with NASA’s decision, but the GAO wasn’t able to address them due to their limited jurisdiction.
“The Human Landing System program needs to have competition now instead of later – that’s the best solution for NASA and the best solution for our country.”
