The Nasa order for a new lunar module went to Space-X, a lawsuit by its rival Jeff Bezos had been dismissed. The space agency is now planning another call for tenders – and is thus heating up the competition.
Well, after Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos sued because his billionaire rival Elon Musk had snatched the Nasa order for a moon lander from him, the US space agency wants to tender another order to have a second landing system available for its moon missions . With Project Artemis, NASA wants to land humans on the moon again by 2025.
Elon Musk’s space company Space-X was awarded the contract for the first lunar module almost a year ago, the project is worth almost 2.9 billion dollars. In addition to Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin, the US company Dynetics was also defeated. NASA had rated the Space-X and Blue Origin studies as “acceptable” from a technical point of view, but the price of Space-X was “by a large margin” lower, it said at the time. Blue Origin had unsuccessfully offered to pay additional costs of two billion dollars. The company then sued, arguing that Space-X’s bid did not meet the requirements of the tender and led to security risks. A federal court later dismissed the lawsuit.
“Competition is critical to our success on the surface of the moon.”
Nevertheless, Nasa has now announced that a second landing system is to be developed. “Competition is critical to our success on the surface of the moon and beyond,” said NASA CEO Bill Nelson. He had also been urged at congressional hearings to ensure more competition.
The authority wants to publish the tender for another lunar module in the summer. With this, NASA wants to be able to transport more astronauts and cargo to the lunar surface and to enable longer stays. At the same time, Space-X should also revise its moon lander with a view to further missions. According to current Nasa plans, the first demonstration mission should take place in April 2025 at the earliest and carry four astronauts to the surface from the Gateway space station in lunar orbit. The astronauts fly to the gateway itself with the Orioncapsule, for which Airbus is building the supply module in Bremen.