Bezos’ rocket company loses challenge to NASA SpaceX moon contract

Jeff Bezos’ rocket company carried him to the edge of space last week. But it won’t be flying NASA astronauts to the moon’s surface, at least for now.

The Government Accountability Office on Friday rejected protests challenging NASA’s decision to go with just one spacecraft lander design for its return of astronauts to the moon, a $2.9 billion award that went to Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX.

The competition for the contracts was seen as a battle of billionaires between Musk and Bezos, founder of Amazon who also started a rocket company, Blue Origin. A third company, Dynetics, a defence contractor in Huntsville, Alabama, was also competing for the contract.

In a twist, the loss of the protest may actually help Blue Origin. If the GAO had upheld the protest, NASA may have had to redo the competition, which seeks a system that can take astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon and back. Redoing the competition would most likely have taken months.

NASA officials can now decide whether to take up Bezos on an offer he made in an open letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Monday: to effectively slice $2 billion off the $6 billion proposal from Blue Origin, which collaborated with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

When the competition was announced, NASA officials said they wanted more than one design to ensure both competition and redundancy in case one of the companies stumbled.

But in April, NASA announced that it was awarding just one contract, to SpaceX. The company will use the money for the development of Starship, the large reusable spacecraft that the company is developing in South Texas and that is central to Musk’s ambitions of one day sending people to Mars.

Blue Origin and Dynetics protested the award to the Government Accountability Office, which can review federal contract decisions. The GAO said NASA did not violate any of its rules by making just one award — the announcement of the competition said NASA reserved the right to make just one award — or none at all.

The current bids by Blue Origin and Dynetics remain valid until Aug. 9. A Blue Origin spokesman said the company has requested that NASA extend the deadline to Nov. 1 “to ensure NASA has every chance to award a second provider and restore competition.”

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