The complaint was initially sealed, but several weeks later the court released a redacted version of it, showing that Blue Origin focused on a claim that NASA gave unfair consideration of SpaceX’s proposal compared to the other bidders. It filed a lawsuit in the Court of Federal Claims, which handles appeals of GAO protests. The other two bidders, Blue Origin and Dynetics, protested that decision to the Government Accountability Office, but the GAO rejected their protests in late July (see “Relaunching a lunar lander program”, The Space Review, August 2, 2021.)ĭynetics accepted that decision, but Blue Origin did not. The obvious source of the delay was the litigation regarding NASA’s selection of only SpaceX for a Human Landing System (HLS) award in April. Instead, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said, the new goal was no earlier than 2025. In a briefing with reporters last Tuesday, NASA leadership formally acknowledged what many had long suspected: the goal set by the Trump Administration in early 2019 of landing astronauts on the Moon by 2024 was no longer viable. The company also caught a break last week: it’s no longer on the hook to deliver a lunar lander version of Starship for NASA’s Artemis program in 2024. We’ve lost nearly seven months in litigation that likely has pushed the first human landing to no earlier than 2025,” Nelson said. “Our teams need time to speak now with SpaceX about the Human Landing System. And, amid all that activity in Florida, the company performed a brief static fire of the six Raptor engines in its first orbital Starship vehicle at Boca Chica, Texas, another step towards a launch some time next year. ![]() Early Saturday, a Falcon 9 lifted off from a nearby pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, placing 53 Starlink satellites in orbit. Less than 48 hours after that Crew Dragon splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, another Crew Dragon launched on a Falcon 9 from the Kennedy Space Center, delivering a new group of four astronauts to the station within 24 hours of liftoff. The company started the week bringing back a Crew Dragon spacecraft from the International Space Station with four astronauts on board who spent more than six months in space. ![]() There are rarely slow weeks at SpaceX, but last week was certainly was not one of them.
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