On Aug 19, the Court of Federal Claims released a schedule for South Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin’s lawsuit against NASA’s lunar lander award which includes a “Voluntary Stay of Performance” by NASA until Nov. 1. NASA agreed to pause the project in exchange for resolving the lawsuit by the end of that period.
The suit is one of several efforts by Blue Origin to stop the contract from going forward.
Blue Origin filed the lawsuit on Aug. 13, less than three weeks after the Government Accountability Office denied the company's protest of NASA awarding the contract to Elon Musk-led SpaceX. Due to Blue Origin’s protest, the deal had been paused between mid-April and July 30.
The lawsuit claims that NASA's evaluation of the proposals for the project was “unlawful and improper.”
“The issues identified in this procurement and its outcomes must be addressed to restore fairness, create competition, and ensure a safe return to the Moon for America,” Blue Origin said in the lawsuit.
Bezos also attempted to sway the bid on July 26 by offering to waive $2 billion in fees for NASA if it chose Blue Origin for the contract rather than SpaceX.
The dispute first arose when NASA was given a smaller budget for the lunar lander project than it expected. The agency scrapped its original plan to contract two companies for the lunar lander, choosing SpaceX alone for the $2.9 billion contract. The contract was awarded on April 16, and Blue Origin and Huntsville, Ala.-based defense contractor Dynetics Inc. submitted a protest on April 26.
Under the contract, SpaceX will develop a “commercial human lander” to take two astronauts to the surface of the moon, NASA said in April when it first awarded the contract to the company. The agency hopes to send its astronauts to the moon by 2024.
NASA’s contract involves one test landing without humans and another with humans. SpaceX has already received $439 million from NASA for the project, The Verge reported.
