On April 16, NASA announced the conclusion of a contract worth $2.9 billion for the construction of the lander with SpaceX
TASS, August 16. Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, filed a lawsuit in a US federal court on Monday against the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in connection with the award of a contract for the development of a lunar lander to SpaceX, headed by entrepreneur Elon Musk. This was reported by the online portal The Verge.
According to him, Blue Origin claims that NASA improperly evaluated its proposal for the construction of the module. As sources told the portal, the company notified the judge that it would seek to suspend the execution of the contract for the duration of the case.
On April 16, NASA announced a $2.9 billion contract for the construction of the lander with SpaceX, rejecting applications from Blue Origin and Dynetics. The US Space Agency explained its decision with limited funds and the fact that Musk's offer was the most profitable. Blue Origin and Dynetics filed a complaint with the Congressional oversight body, in connection with which the execution of the contract was suspended until the end of the proceedings. At the end of July, this complaint was rejected.
In the spring of 2019, NASA announced the project of the Artemis program ("Artemis"), which will consist of three stages. The first of them (Artemis 1) provides for an unmanned flight of the Orion spacecraft installed on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket around the Moon and its return to Earth. The second stage (Artemis 2) is a flyby of a natural satellite of the Earth with a crew on board. At the third stage of the mission (Artemis 3), NASA expects to land astronauts on the Moon in 2024, and then send them to Mars approximately in the mid-2030s.
