The Government Accountability Office sided with NASA Friday denying protests
submitted by Blue Origin and Dynetics of the agency’s decision to pick only
SpaceX’s Starship for the first human moon lander contract.
The decision clears the way for NASA to continue working with SpaceX to send
the first astronauts back to the moon in 50 years. NASA awarded SpaceX’s
Starship spaceship the first human landing system contract in April for
$2.94 billion. SpaceX has been developing and testing Starship in Texas with
plans for orbital flights in the coming months.
Soon after the contract announcement, two of SpaceX’s competitors for the
contract — Blue Origin and Dynetics — submitted bid protests to the GAO
arguing NASA should have selected more than one vehicle for the job.
On Thursday, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the protests had slowed the
human lander development but could not comment further as the protests were
still under review.
On most accounts, the GAO sided with NASA concluding that “the evaluation of
all three proposals was reasonable, and consistent with applicable
procurement law, regulation, and the announcement’s terms.”
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos recently offered NASA a discount should it
choose to award a second contract, slicing the price of its moon lander by
billions of dollars.
“We’ve lost some time because there is this a dispute that is going to be
reconciled by the General Accounting Office and that should be coming next
week. And under the law, the policies and procedures of the GAO protests we
are mute until that decision is made,” Nelson said.
The GAO had until Aug. 4 to release its decision.
Kenneth E. Patton, managing Associate General Counsel for Procurement Law at
GAO, explained the decision to deny the protests in a statement Friday.
“In denying the protests, GAO first concluded that NASA did not violate
procurement law or regulation when it decided to make only one award. NASA’s
announcement provided that the number of awards the agency would make was
subject to the amount of funding available for the program,” the statement
read. “In addition, the announcement reserved the right to make multiple
awards, a single award, or no award at all. In reaching its award decision,
NASA concluded that it only had sufficient funding for one contract award.
GAO further concluded there was no requirement for NASA to engage in
discussions, amend, or cancel the announcement as a result of the amount of
funding available for the program. As a result, GAO denied the protest
arguments that NASA acted improperly in making a single award to SpaceX.”
The human landing system is a key part of NASA’s Artemis program slated to
return astronauts to the lunar surface beginning in 2024. The astronaut
landing system will have to work with NASA’s Orion spacecraft and the
Gateway station orbiting the moon to return humans there in the next few
years.
SpaceX’s Starship will carry astronauts from NASA’s orbiting lunar station
down to the surface of the moon and back up to the Lunar Gateway. It’s
unclear how the Lunar Gateway and Starship will work together, but this
contract resolution clears the way for work to continue on that partnership.
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