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NASA has suspended work on SpaceX’s new $ 2.9 billion lunar lander contract while a federal oversight agency rules on two protests against the award, the agency said on Friday.
Putting the work of the Human Landing System (or HLS) on hold until GAO makes a decision on the two protests means SpaceX won’t immediately receive its first part of the $ 2.9 billion prize, nor will initiate initial discussions with NASA which normally take place at the start of a major contract.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX was chosen by NASA on April 16 to build the agency’s first human lunar lander since the Apollo program, as the agency chose to rely on just one company for a high-profile contract that many players in the space industry expected to switch to two. companies.
As a result, two companies vying for the contract, Blue Origin and Dynetics, have protested NASA’s decision to the Government Accountability Office, which adjudicates bidding disputes. Blue Origin alleges the agency unfairly “moved the goalposts at the last minute” and endangered NASA’s quick timeline to 2024 by choosing only SpaceX.
“Following protests from GAO, NASA has informed SpaceX that progress on the HLS contract has been put on hold until GAO resolves all pending disputes related to this market,” NASA spokeswoman said. Monica Witt in a statement.
Starship, SpaceX’s fully reusable rocket system in development to transport humans and cargo to the Moon and Mars, won NASA’s award primarily for its massive cargo capacity and proposed bid of 2.9 billion dollars – much cheaper than Blue Origin and Dynetics’, according to a NASA Source Screening Document.
Starship’s development at this point has been primarily driven by Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of SpaceX. The company launched several prototypes of Starship during short and high altitude test flights at its launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Landing the prototypes after flying over six miles in the air turned out to be a formidable challenge – all of SpaceX’s high-altitude rocket prototypes were destroyed in landing phase blasts.
Development of SpaceX’s private spacecraft will likely continue. The company’s most recent test of a prototype spacecraft, SN15, is expected to launch in the coming days after the license is approved by the Federal Aviation Administration this week.
NASA said choosing a company was the best decision it could make at the time with the funds made available by Congress. Last year, Congress gave the agency $ 850 million of the $ 3.3 billion it asked for to procure two lunar landers.
The SpaceX award was a key “first step” in a larger program to secure transportation to the moon, said at the time Kathy Lueders, NASA’s chief human spaceflight, promising that new opportunities to contracts will open in the near future.
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