Gloria Holmes
Mexico City (apro). The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has rejected Blue Origin’s lawsuit, filed by Jeff Bezos, against the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, for its English acronym) for awarding Elon Musk’s Space X a contract to build a lunar landing system.
The US watchdog has rejected that NASA acted “inappropriately” by awarding the contract to one company, despite the original idea that the two companies were involved in the work, BBC Mundo reported.
Blue Origin, of Bezos, also the founder of Amazon, must file a response to this legal decision before October 12.
In the lawsuit that Bezos filed on August 13 on behalf of Blue Origin, he accused NASA of making an illegal and inappropriate evaluation during the bidding process.
“We strongly believe that the problems identified in this acquisition and its outcome must be addressed to restore fairness, create competition, and ensure a safe return to the Moon for America,” he said.
The US magnate had made an offer, like Musk, to be part of the construction of this lunar site, but it was rejected as “unfair”.
When announcing NASA’s decision, the head of the Human Exploration Division, Kathy Lueders, admitted that the space agency’s budget prevented it from choosing the two companies, because the US Congress granted them only 850 million out of the 3000,300 million euros required for the project.
Bezos offered to cover up to €2 billion in NASA costs to reconsider the contract, and they still refused.
In addition, it turns out that NASA accepted Musk’s proposal given his track record of orbiting missions by his company, Space X, and his plan was the cheapest.
The €2.9 billion project aims to return astronauts to the Moon in 2024 on a mission not carried out since 1972.
Laurence Malcom
