NASA has suspended work on SpaceX’s new $2.9 billion lunar lander contract while a federal watchdog agency arbitrates two protests over the award, the agency said Friday.
NASA makes a decision after rivals protest
Putting the Human Landing System (or HLS) work on hold until the GAO settles on a choice on the two protests implies SpaceX will not quickly get its first lump of the $2.9 billion award, nor will it begin the initial talks with NASA that would typically occur at the beginning of a significant contract. Elon Musk’s SpaceX was picked by NASA on April sixteenth to assemble the agency’s first human lunar lander since the Apollo program, as the agency selected to depend on only one organization for a high-profile contract that numerous in the space industry expected to go to two organizations. Thus, two organizations that were in the running for the contract, Blue Origin and Dynetics, protested NASA’s choice to the Government Accountability Office, which arbitrates bidding disputes. Blue Origin asserts the agency outlandishly “moved the goal lines without a second to spare” and jeopardized NASA’s expedient 2024 timeline by just picking SpaceX.
“Compliant with the GAO protests, NASA trained SpaceX that progress on the HLS contract has been suspended until GAO settle all extraordinary case identified with this acquirement,” NASA representative Monica Witt said in a proclamation. Starship, SpaceX’s completely reusable rocket system being worked on to in the long run ship humans and payload to the Moon and Mars, won NASA’s award mostly for its huge load capacity and its proposed bid of $2.9 billion ? far less expensive than Blue Origin’s and Dynetics’, as indicated by a NASA source choice report. Starship’s advancement to this point has been driven fundamentally by Musk, SpaceX’s tycoon founder and chief executive. The organization has dispatched a few Starship prototypes in short-and high-altitude test flights at its Boca Chica, Texas, dispatch offices. Landing the prototypes in the wake of taking off more than six miles noticeable all around has end up being an imposing test ? the entirety of SpaceX’s high-altitude prototype rockets have been annihilated in landing-phase explosions.
SpaceX’s private Starship advancement will probably proceed. The organization’s latest test of a Starship prototype, SN15, is scheduled to dispatch inside the following not many days in the wake of securing license approval from the Federal Aviation Administration this week. NASA has said picking one organization was the best choice it could make at the time with the assets made accessible from Congress. A year ago, Congress gave the agency $850 million of the $3.3 billion it mentioned to secure two lunar landers. SpaceX’s award was a key “first step” in a more extensive program to tie down transportation to the Moon, NASA’s human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders said at that point, promising that new contract openings will open up sooner rather than later.