Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is suing the US government over NASA’s decision to award a $2.9 billion moon landing contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.
Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the world’s richest people, founded Blue Origin to pursue his dream of a commercial space flight, which he, his brother and two other crew members saw take off from Texas last month.
After that flight, Blue Origin offered NASA $2 billion if it changed its mind about the lunar lander contract. That didn’t happen, and Blue Origin’s lawsuit was filed in US Court of Federal Claims on Friday.
The company said in a court filing that it defies “unlawful and inappropriate evaluation of the proposals by NASA.”
Last month, the Federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) sided with NASA in its decision to choose a single supplier for a lunar lander, rejecting Blue Origin’s protest. NASA must respond to the request before October 12.
Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics argued that NASA was required to award multiple awards. The Government Accountability Office said it “dismissed the arguments of the protest that NASA had acted improperly by awarding a single award to SpaceX.”
Blue Origin previously said it was still convinced there were “fundamental problems” with NASA’s decision, and that the Government Accountability Office could not address them “due to its limited jurisdiction.”
Blue Origin said it will continue to advocate for the two spot providers because it believes this is the right solution.
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