Blue Origin wanted $ 6 billion deal with NASA, got $ 26 million instead

Earlier this year, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin lost an offer to competitor SpaceX to build a human landing system for NASA’s Artemis program. This week he won a contract with NASA for similar work, but at a much lower price.

NASA said on Tuesday it had awarded Blue Origin and four other companies a bundle of contracts worth a combined $ 146 million to develop lunar lander concepts that could potentially lead to the development of a landing system. real in the future.

Blue Origin’s contract was for $ 26.5 million. The other four companies are SpaceX ($ 9.4 million), Dynetics ($ 40.8 million), Lockheed Martin ($ 35.2 million) and Northrop Grumman ($ 34.8 million).

The contracts were awarded under NASA’s Annex N NextSTEP-2 (Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships): Sustainable Human Landing System Studies and Risk Reduction. This is a different section of the Artemis program of the Human Landing System (HLS) contract that was awarded to SpaceX earlier this year, for which Blue Origin and Dynetics both submitted competing proposals.

SpaceX’s lunar lander proposal is valued at $ 2.9 billion, surpassing Blue Origin’s $ 5.99 billion and Dynetics’ $ 3.3 billion.

While the NextSTEP-2 contracts aren’t as big as the HLS, NASA said the outcome of these projects could inform future lander development. Contractors will be responsible for performing component testing for performance, safety and other functionality.

“The work of these companies will ultimately help shape the strategy and requirements for a future NASA solicitation to provide regular transport of astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon,” the agency said in a press release on Tuesday.

In July, Blue Origin and Dynetics filed a complaint with the United States Government Accountability Office, protesting against NASA’s selection of a single HLS contractor. The watchdog ruled that NASA held a fair competition. In response, Blue Origin sued NASA last month in the United States Federal Claims Court. The trial is ongoing.