Artemis: Blue Origin (Bezos) sues NASA

Blue Origin do not get angry: the NASA did not act within the rules of competition (and calls for tenders) by privileging from the outset SpaceX for its Artemis program (return of US astronauts to the Moon). After a salvo of official protests, Space company founded by Jeff Bezos just sued NASA in federal court. This legal action follows a few days the procedure that Blue Origin brought before the GAO, a procedure quickly retoquée by the body of the Congress in charge of the control of the public accounts.

This new complaint accuses NASA of having awarded SpaceX the construction of the manned moon landing system (HLS), a contract which amounts to 2.9 billion dollars. For Blue Origin, the call for tenders was loaded from the start: the American space agency would have pre-selected SpaceX even before any serious study of competing programs (including the Blue moon by Blue Origin).

In parallel with this legal counterattack, Blue Origin is also active on social networks by trolling the Starship launcher, the future rocket of the Artémis mission. Blue Origin argues that the choice of the Starship turns out to be extremely risky and costly in terms of test flights (more than ten flights planned). It will be recalled all the same that until now, the Blue Origin rocket has not exceeded 107 km in altitude (just above the Karman line), while SpaceX’s Crew Dragon manages to dock with repeatedly to an international space station 408 km above sea level. The Moon is 384,400 km from Earth.