The U.S. Government Accountability Office upheld NASA’s decision to make Elon Musk’s SpaceX the sole winner of a contract to develop the next lunar lander, despite protests from Jeff Bezos, who has argued that it is unfair to grant a single company the award.
Back in April, NASA opted to award its $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX, rejecting a bid from Bezos’ Blue Origin, which partnered with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. The space agency initially intended to have at least two private-sector companies compete to build a spacecraft for the first moon landing since 1972 — an initiative dubbed the Human Landing System or HLS.
Citing budgeting shortfalls however, NASA ultimately gave the job to just one company. It had received only $850 million of the $3.3 billion it had requested from Congress to build the Moon lander.
In response, the Amazon founder filed a complaint with the Government Accountability Office, which has since been dismissed.
“NASA did not violate procurement law or regulation when it decided to make only one award … the evaluation of all three proposals was reasonable, and consistent with applicable procurement law, regulation, and the announcement’s terms,” GAO managing associate general counsel Kenneth Patton wrote in a statement to CNBC.
The decision will allow for the space agency “to establish a timeline for the first crewed landing on the Moon in more than 50 years,” NASA said in a statement.
On Monday, the world’s richest man personally appealed to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson regarding the contract, offering to waive up to $2 billion in payments over roughly the next two years.
Nelson declined to comment on the note during a briefing earlier this week.
