Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is bidding on NASA’s lucrative moon contract again after it lost to SpaceX last year
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Blue origin get a second chance to help NASA send astronauts to the moon after losing the contract to SpaceX last year. On Wednesday, the space agency announced it planned to reopen the competition for its artemis program to the second company. Shortly after the announcement, the Space company Jeff Bezos announced it would place an offer for a multibilion-dollar contract for the second time.
“Blue origin is ready to compete and remain very committed to the success of Artemis,” said a spokesman for the blue origin. “We will continue to work with NASA to reach the destination of the United States to return to the moon as soon as possible.” Michael Sheetz CNBC is the first to report the blue announcement. NASA initially began the program in 2019 and said it was looking for two companies to provide spacecraft that could transport astronauts from orbit months to the moon. Agency backward on the offer in April, said the lack of funds had a limited NASA to choose a company – a decision brought to court.
Blue from trying to get NASA to withdraw his decision and take this problem to the government accountability office. When it failed, Jeff Bezos’ Venture Space demanded NASA in the Federal Court in August, stub a decision of agency to choose SpaceX as the only Lasar Lander contract winner “unfair” and a favorite example. Blue origin accused NASA eliminating the element of competition in the project by choosing one company, not two companies to work side by side. The lawsuit was dismissed in November.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson did not determine how much it costed because the budget was waiting for the release of the President Joe Biden’s proposal for the 2023 fiscal year next week. “I promise the competition. So this is him,” Nelson said during a press conference on Tuesday. “We thought, and so did the Congress, that competition leads to better results, more reliable. It benefits everyone. It benefits NASA. It benefits Americans,” he added. The second contract will require a spacecraft to be able to bring more cargo and can handle it longer on the surface of the moon, according to NASA’s press release.
Blue origin can be a top competitor for the contract. Last year, the company Bezos and Musk competed for the top spot in the competition. The founder of Amazon even offered to subsidize the blue cost of origin with $ 2 billion of its own money to compete with spacex offers, but the contract is still more expensive than the Musk, which is $ 2.9 billion – less than half the price of all the other spacecraft companies.
“Blue origin is very happy that NASA creates competition by getting the second month’s landing system,” said a company spokesman in a statement. “By doing that, NASA will set a critical redundancy and resilience needed to build a lunar presence a.S. permanent.”Asa officials said the second contract would be determined at the beginning of next year and they planned to fly the Lasar Lander spacecraft in the next five years. The SpaceX contract with NASA needed an effort to fly the Starship spaceship test to the moon and finally landed astronauts on the moon using a spacecraft. Musk said Spacex aims to launch the first orbital flights of the spacecraft in the next few months.
Blue origin get a second chance to help NASA send astronauts to the moon after losing the contract to SpaceX last year. On Wednesday, the space agency announced it planned to reopen the competition for its artemis program to the second company. Shortly after the announcement, the Space company Jeff Bezos announced it would place…