NASA pauses work on SpaceX moon contract after Blue Origin complaint

In the movies, space battles happen among the stars, on planets far, far away. IRL, they happen in federal courtrooms.

Earlier this week, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin filed a complaint in federal court against SpaceX, contesting NASA’s decision to award Musk’s space company a $2.9 billion contract to develop a human landing system (HLS) for NASA. On Thursday, a judge issued a stay to NASA, which will stop work on the project until Nov. 1.

• The contract is part of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to place a person on the moon for the first time since 1972.

Some background: NASA typically funds multiple efforts on the same project, to ensure redundancy, and had initially planned to do the same here. But when budget cuts forced NASA to select only one vendor, it went with SpaceX, which has previously flown astronauts and cargo to the ISS on behalf of the agency.

Blue Origin has been on the offensive since then, even putting out infographics that claim SpaceX’s proposal is expensive, inefficient, and dangerous. It also complained to the Government Accountability Office, which ruled that NASA fairly awarded the contract to SpaceX.

• Blue Origin also offered to waive up to $2 billion in development costs.

Bottom line: Budget constraints may have already slowed NASA’s plans to get a human on the moon by 2024, but procurement fights could prolong the project even further.—JM