NASA puts SpaceX’s lunar lander contract on hold following Blue Origin’s lawsuit

SpaceX won’t be working on its $2.9 billion lunar lander contract for a while after NASA agreed to put the project on hold. The space agency told Reuters that it temporarily ceased all work on the project after Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin filed a complaint against it with the US Court of Federal Claims. “In exchange for this temporary stay of work, all parties agreed to an expedited litigation schedule that concludes on November 1st,” the space agency said in a statement.

Blue Origin sued NASA over its decision to award a lunar lander contract to SpaceX alone when it originally planned to award two contracts. The agency historically works with more than one contractor for each mission to ensure that it can launch in time. However, it only received a fraction of the budget it requested for the Artemis lunar lander, which will be designed to carry human astronauts to the surface of the moon from the Orion spacecraft, and chose to forgo awarding a second contract.

Bezos’ company first challenged the decision back in April and filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office. As The Verge notes, that complaint put the SpaceX …read more