Blue Origin’s NASA Lawsuit Puts SpaceX’s Moon Lander Get the job done on Maintain

Blue Origin on Thursday scored a compact acquire in its relentless fight for NASA’s Human Landing Program (HLS) deal. Though the Jeff Bezos-led business has not officially acquired the task nonetheless, its lawsuit from NASA in the U.S. Court docket of Federal Claims has set the agency’s get the job done with SpaceX on keep.

Past Friday, Blue Origin submitted a complaint with the U.S. Court docket of Federal Statements, hard NASA’s conclusion in April to pick out SpaceX as the sole contractor of HLS. The lawsuit arrived following Blue Origin dropped an attraction just before the U.S. Govt Accountability Business.

On Thursday, the court docket issued the plan for the suit, which incorporated a “NASA Voluntary Continue to be of Performance” clause that would result in a approximately three-month pause in NASA’s ongoing perform with SpaceX.

“NASA has voluntarily paused do the job with SpaceX for the human landing system (HLS) Possibility A deal productive Aug. 19 as a result of Nov. 1,” NASA claimed in a statement on Thursday. “In trade for this short term stay of do the job, all parties agreed to an expedited litigation schedule that concludes on Nov. 1.”

In an job interview with SpaceNews on Thursday, NASA Administrator Monthly bill Nelson claimed the situation is dealt with by the Justice Division.

“This is a issue that is out of our fingers,” he instructed the publication. “The judge could call for, in essence, quite laborious discovery.”

As a result, the dispute will hold off NASA’s plan to return American astronauts to the moon by 2024 by means of the Artemis Plan, below which the HLS contract falls.

“NASA officials are continuing to function with the Division of Justice to critique the aspects of the circumstance and search forward to a timely resolution of this subject,” the agency said in Thursday’s statement.

Blue Origin, SpaceX, and a third agency referred to as Dynetics submitted bids for NASA’s HLS contract in March 2020. Although in the earlier NASA has awarded many contracts for a one undertaking, these types of as the Business Crew Plan, this time the agency picked only one particular contractor, SpaceX, citing budgeting factors.

In accordance to a report unveiled by the GAO on July 30 responding to Blue Origin’s criticism, NASA experienced been given only $850 million from Congress in fiscal 12 months 2021 for the HLS system, with an additional $96 million from other courses that could fund HLS. Just about $400 million of that funding was by now put in on the “base period” awards NASA gave to Blue Origin, SpaceX and Dynetics in 2020. About $200 million has been reserved for inside fees for the software. That remaining the company only $355 million obtainable for new HLS awards in 2021.

NASA has already paid SpaceX $300 million as portion of its $2.9 billion sole deal. Nelson reported he didn’t know if it was feasible to locate funding for a 2nd HLS agreement to Blue Origin.