Moscow. August 20. INTERFAX - The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has suspended until November 2021 the execution of a contract for the development of a human landing system on the lunar surface, the main contractor of which is the American private aerospace company SpaceX, the specialized website SpaceNews reports.
It is reported that NASA has decided to "freeze" the contract to speed up the course of the trial, which began upon the appeal of Jeff Bezos ' company Blue Origin to the US court on federal petitions on August 13 with the requirement to check the legality of the decision made by NASA on the choice of Elon Musk's company SpaceX to develop a system for landing a man on the Moon in 2024 as part of the Artemis program.
"NASA has voluntarily suspended work with SpaceX on the Human Lunar Landing System (HLS) from August 19 to November 1. In exchange for a temporary suspension of work, the parties agreed to accelerate the conduct of court proceedings, which will end on November 1," a NASA representative said in an interview with SpaceNews.
In April of this year, Blue Origin filed a protest with the US Accounting Chamber in connection with NASA's choice of SpaceX to send a man to the Moon as part of the Artemis program.
According to the company, NASA did not give Blue Origin the opportunity to review their application for participation in the competition to send a man to the Moon, when the agency announced a reduction in the program budget from $ 3.3 billion to $ 850 million. Initially, it was planned that two contestants could be selected to participate in the program, but with an insufficient budget, this option became impossible.
On July 30, the US Chamber of Accounts rejected the stated protest, confirming the legitimacy of receiving the contract by Musk's company. According to its decision, NASA did not violate any rules when choosing the winner, the management had the right to choose only one contractor. The report of the Chamber also notes that the project of the human landing system on the Moon submitted by SpaceX met the stated requirements, which means that the company received the contract legally.
Earlier, in September 2019, NASA asked private companies to participate in a competition to create innovative projects as part of the program to develop a system for landing a man on the Moon in 2024.
SpaceX, Dynetics and Blue Origin participated in the competition for the contract in partnership with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper.
In April 2020, NASA allocated money to the participants for the development of a system project for the safe landing of a person on the Moon until December of the same year, the total amount of allocations amounted to $ 967 million.
