Less than a month after awarding SpaceX a $2.89 billion contract to build a human landing system (HLS) for the historic Artemis mission, NASA has halted work on the project pending complaints by rival bidders.
Two firms that lost out on the deal—Dynetics and Blue Origin—have filed protests with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) over NASA’s decision to make a single HLS “Option A” award to SpaceX. In an April 16 source selection statement, Kathryn Lueders, head of NASA’s human spaceflight office, revealed that the agency’s “longstanding” Option A acquisition strategy of making two contract awards is not currently fiscally sound.
“It was therefore my determination that NASA should, as a first step, open price negotiations with the Option A offeror that is both very highly rated from a technical and management perspective and that also had, by a wide margin, the lowest initially proposed price,” she said. That company was SpaceX.
Not everyone is happy with the final decision, though. Applied science and information technology firm Dynetics last week filed a protest with the GAO, arguing that NASA chose “the most anti-competitive and high-risk option available” after receiving only about one-fourth of its requested budget for this fiscal year. Instead, Dynetics said, NASA should have revised its approach, allowed offerors to amend their proposals, or withdrawn the solicitation entirely.
“It’s really atypical for NASA to make these kinds of errors, Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith told The New York TimesThe New York Times. “They’re generally quite good at acquisition, especially its flagship missions like returning America to the surface of the Moon. We felt that these errors needed to be addressed and remedied.”
In a statement to Engadget, NASA acknowledged the protests and its instruction to SpaceX to halt progress on the HLS contract, adding that it “cannot provide further comment due to the pending litigation.”
“Blue Origin’s proposal has merit and is largely in alignment with the technical and management objectives set forth in the solicitation,” Lueders explains in the source selection statement. “Nonetheless, I am not selecting Blue Origin for an Option A contract award because I find that its proposal does not present sufficient value to the government when analyzed pursuant to the solicitation’s evaluation criteria and methodology.”
The same goes for Dynetics, which, despite having “some meritorious technical and management attributes … does not provide sufficient value to the government,” Leuders concluded.
NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics did not immediately respond to PCMag’s request for comment.
NASA’s lunar exploration program, authorized in 2017, will land the first woman and next man on the Moon in 2024, and help establish a sustainable human lunar presence by the end of the decade. Artemis missions are expected to begin this year with NASA’s commercial partners. There is no word on whether this HLS snag will delay any scheduled trips.
