Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin takes NASA to federal court over HLS agreement

Jeff Bezos’ area business Blue Origin submitted a grievance in federal court versus NASA, continuing its demonstration that the company mistakenly granted a profitable agreement to Elon Musk’s SpaceX previously this year.

“This bid protest challenges NASA’s unlawful and improper evaluation of proposals,” Blue Origin’s attorneys composed in its court filing.

The demonstration, submitted in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on Monday, is sealed and marks the next action in the business’s effort to get NASA’s choice reversed. A Blue Origin representative validated the suit filing, including a declaration to CNBC that it is looking “to remedy the flaws in the acquisition process found in NASA’s Human Landing System.”

“We firmly believe that the issues identified in this procurement and its outcomes must be addressed to restore fairness, create competition, and ensure a safe return to the Moon for America,” Blue Origin stated.

In a declaration to CNBC, a NASA representative stated the area company’s “officials are currently reviewing details of the case.”

Blue Origin’s filing in court comes a number of weeks after the U.S. Government Accountability Office rejected the business’s demonstration, supporting NASA’s choice.

The GAO judgment backed the area company’s surprise statement in April that NASA granted SpaceX with a lunar lander agreement worth about $2.9 billion. SpaceX was taking on Blue Origin and Dynetics for what was anticipated to be 2 agreements, prior to NASA just granted a single agreement due to a lower-than-expected allowance for the program from Congress.

Blue Origin has not let up on its battle to win an agreement under NASA’s HLS program, among the last essential pieces of the company’s strategy to return U.S. astronauts to the surface area of the moon. Before the April agreement award, NASA had actually given out almost $1 billion in idea advancement agreements– with SpaceX getting $135 million, Dynetics $253 million, and Blue Origin getting $579 million.

The business’s court filing on Monday comes as Blue Origin has actually stepped up a public relations offensive versus NASA utilizing SpaceX’s next-generation Starship to land astronauts on the moon. In a series of relative infographics, Blue Origin has actually highlighted the “unprecedented number of technologies, developments, and operations that have never been done before for Starship to land on the Moon.”

Blue Origin recently launched an infographic that included that Starship is “a launch vehicle that has never flown to orbit and is still being designed.”

Musk, in reaction to Blue Origin’s infographic, provided his view of Bezos’ business and its criticism.

“The sad thing is that even if Santa Claus suddenly made their hardware real for free, the first thing you’d want to do is cancel it,” Musk composed in a tweet.