According to the latest report, after losing last year’s contract bid to SpaceX, Blue Origin will have another chance this year to help NASA send astronauts to the moon.
NASA announced Wednesday that it will reopen its bid for the Artemis program to a second company. Just after the announcement, the Jeff Bezos-owned rocket company announced it would be participating in a second bid.
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“Blue Origin is ready to bid, and we remain committed to helping Artemis succeed,” said a Blue Origin spokesperson. “We will continue to work with NASA to help the United States achieve its goal of returning to the moon as quickly as possible.”
NASA launched the Artemis program in 2019 and hopes to hire two companies to provide it with spacecraft that can take astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon. NASA retracted the plan last April, saying a lack of funding had left them with one company to choose from. Blue Origin takes NASA to court.
Blue Origin wanted NASA to reverse the decision and refer the issue to the U.S. Government Accountability Office for arbitration, but it was unsuccessful. So the company sued NASA in U.S. federal court in April last year, accusing NASA of “unfair” and favoritism in choosing only one SpaceX lunar lander supplier.
Moreover, Blue Origin also alleges that NASA’s reduction of two suppliers to one led to a lack of competition for the project. The lawsuit was dismissed last November. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson did not specify the cost of the Artemis program as it awaits the U.S. president’s release of the government’s budget for the fiscal year 2023 next week.
“I committed to competition. Competition is here,” Nielsen said on Tuesday’s conference call. “We think competition will lead to better, more reliable outcomes, and Congress holds that view. It’s good for everyone. , good for NASA, good for Americans.”
Furthermore, the second contract calls for the vehicle to be able to carry more cargo and stay on the lunar surface longer, NASA said in a press release. Blue Origin would be the top candidate for the contract.
The company and SpaceX completed last year for the only supplier seat at the time. Bezos even said he would subsidize Blue Origin’s $2 billion in personal contributions to compete with SpaceX, but their bid was still higher than Elon Musk’s SpaceX — Musk’s bid was only $2.9 billion, less than half that of other aerospace companies.
A Blue Origin spokesperson said: “We are excited that NASA has recruited a second supplier of human lunar landing systems. In this way, NASA will be able to establish the critical redundancy and robustness required for a permanent American presence on the moon. sex.”
A second contract could be finalized as early as early next year, NASA officials said, and they plan to fly new lunar landers over the next five years. SpaceX’s contract with NASA calls for the company to launch a test Starship spacecraft to the moon and eventually use the spacecraft to send astronauts to the moon. SpaceX plans to conduct its first orbital flight test of the Starship spacecraft in the coming months, Musk said.
