Earlier this year, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin lost a bid to competitor SpaceX to build a human landing system for NASA’s Artemis Program. This week he won a NASA contract for a similar job, but at a much lower price.
NASA announced Tuesday that it has awarded Blue Origin and four other companies a batch of contracts worth $ 146 million combined to develop lander concepts that could lead to the actual development of the landing system in the future.
Blue Origin’s contract was $ 26.5 million. The other four companies are SpaceX ($ 9.4 million), Dynetics ($ 40.8 million), Lockheed Martin ($ 35.2 million) and Northrop Grumman ($ 34.8 million).
The contracts were awarded according to NASA’s NextSTEP-2 Appendix N (Near Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships): Studies of the Sustainable Human Landing System and Risk Reduction. It is a different section of the Artemis program from the Human Landing System (HLS) contract that was awarded to SpaceX earlier this year, for which Blue Origin and Dynetics submitted competing proposals.
SpaceX’s lunar landing proposal is estimated to cost $ 2.9 billion, surpassing Blue Origin’s $ 5.999 billion and Dynetics ’$ 3.3 billion.
Although NextSTEP-2 contracts are not as significant as HLS, NASA said the outcome of these projects could inform future lander development. Contractors will be tasked with testing components of performance, safety, and other functionalities.
“The work of these companies will ultimately help define the strategy and requirements for the application of a future NASA to provide regular transport of astronauts from the lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon “The agency said in a statement on Tuesday.
In July, Blue Origin and Dynetics filed a complaint with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, protesting that NASA only selected one HLS contractor. The watchdog ruled that NASA had organized fair competition. In response, Blue Origin sued NASA last month in the U.S. Federal Claims Court. Demand continues.
