Bezos sues NASA over lunar lander contract
Proving that procurement challenges can extend to inter planetary exploration, Blue Origin, the space firm owned by Jeff Bezos the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, has launched legal proceedings against NASA over its decision to award a $2.9bn (£2.1bn) lunar landing to Elon Musk’s rival space firm, Space X.
The challenge, filed in the US Court of Federal Claims claims NASA engaged in “unlawful and improper evaluation” during the bidding process for the lunar lander project, which aims to deliver a man and woman on the moon in 2024.
“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 statement.
Bezos had partnered with aerospace giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper in a bid to join this crucial phase of NASA's Human Landing System programme.
In NASA's tender evaluation, SpaceX received an "acceptable" technical rating and an "outstanding" management rating.
Blue Origin's bid was also rated "acceptable" on its technical merits, but its management rating was deemed "very good" by the space agency.
Cost is also thought to have played a role: SpaceX's bid was the lowest-priced by a significant margin.
After losing out to SpaceX, Blue Origin filed a protest with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), which independently audits federal agencies, alleging Nasa unfairly "moved the goalposts at the last minute" in the way that it awarded the contract to SpaceX.
Alabama-based defence contractor Dynetics, who also bid for the contract, filed a complaint.
Other than finding for Blue Origin on a minor technical point, the GAO rejected both Blue Origin’s and Dynetic’s complaints on 30 July.
The GAO explained its findings in terms which many procurement professionals on this side of the Atlantic Ocean will find familiar.
NASA’s announcement provided that the number of awards the space agency would make was subject to the amount of funding available for the program. In addition, the announcement reserved the right to make multiple awards, a single award, or no award. In the event, Congress only allocated granted it only $850m of the $3.3bn it requested for the project, leading to NASA’s conclusion that it could only afford to make one award
The GAO further concluded there was no requirement for NASA to engage in discussions, amend, or cancel the announcement as a result of the amount of funding available for the program.
GAO next concluded that the evaluation of all three competing proposals was reasonable, and consistent with applicable procurement law, regulation, and the announcement’s terms.
GAO agreed that in one limited instance NASA had waived a requirement of the announcement for SpaceX. Despite this finding, the decision also concluded that the complainants could not establish any reasonable possibility of competitive prejudice arising from this limited discrepancy in the evaluation.
Like judicial reviews of award decisions in the UK’s court jurisdictions, the GAO expressed no view on the technical or other merits of each bidder’s submission. Value judgments about which offer will most successfully meet the space agency’s needs are reserved for the procuring agencies, subject only to adherence to statutory and other regulatory requirements
Unless overturned by the courts, the decision means that SpaceX's cylindrical Starship vehicle will carry astronauts in NASA's first mission to the moon’s lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972.
Photo by History in HD on Unsplash
