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- Jeff Bezos suffered a loss in his protest against NASA’s awarding of a lunar lander contract to SpaceX.
- Blue Origin had said it was unfair of NASA to award the $ 2.9 billion contract to just one company.
- SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded to the news on Twitter with a flexible bicep emoji.
Jeff Bezos has just received a blow in his efforts to challenge a big win for SpaceX.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Friday denied a protest filed by Bezos’ Blue Origin challenging NASA’s decision to award a lunar lander contract to SpaceX only.
“GAO initially concluded that NASA did not violate government procurement law or regulations when it decided to grant only one award,” the office said in a statement.
Elon Musk’s spaceflight company SpaceX was chosen to receive the $ 2.9 billion contract in April, beating defense contractor Dynetics and Blue Origin. The contract is part of NASA’s goal of returning astronauts to the moon by 2024 through the agency’s Artemis program. NASA’s decision came as a shock as the agency had to choose two of the three companies, not just one.
Soon after, Blue Origin and Dynetics filed protests challenging the decision. Blue Origin said NASA was required to award contracts to multiple companies in accordance with its stated initial preference.
In announcing that it chose SpaceX, NASA said it only chose one company due to congressional limited funding for the program.
Blue Origin claims NASA has never entered into discussions with the company in an attempt to negotiate the price of its human landing system, which NASA says will cost the agency $ 6 billion, or roughly double. of the SpaceX price. Blue Origin says NASA has cleared SpaceX to negotiate, however.
“The ad reserved the right to award multiple awards, a single award or no award,” the GAO statement continued. “In making its award decision, NASA concluded that it only had sufficient funding for a single contract award. GAO further concluded that there was no obligation for NASA to ‘initiate discussions, modify or cancel the announcement due to the amount of funding available for the program. “
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The office added that “the evaluation of the three proposals was reasonable and in accordance with the law on public procurement, regulations and the conditions of the announcement.”
A spokesperson for Blue Origin told Insider that the company “will continue to advocate for two immediate suppliers because we believe it is the right solution.”
“We remain firmly convinced that there were fundamental problems with the NASA decision, but GAO was unable to resolve them due to its limited jurisdiction,” the spokesperson said. “The Human Landing System program has to have competition now rather than later – it is the best solution for NASA and the best solution for our country.”
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX responded to GAO’s decision on Twitter, by simply writing “GAO” and adding the bicep curl emoji.
Just days ago, Bezos offered to cover up to $ 2 billion in costs if NASA gave Blue Origin another chance to secure the lunar lander deal.
Dynetics did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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