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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Watchdog denies Blue Origin's challenge to NASA's lunar lander program [theverge.com]

Blue Origin's protest against NASA's decision to pick just one company to build the country's first human lunar lander in decades was denied by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the watchdog agency said Friday, also denying a similar protest from Dynetics. The decision keeps Blue Origin's rival, Elon Musk's SpaceX, the sole winner of NASA's lucrative Moon lander program and hands a loss to Jeff Bezos, whose space company waged a months-long fight to win the same funding.

In a formal protest [theverge.com] filed in April, Bezos' Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics had accused NASA of running afoul of contracting law when the agency shelved their proposals and gave Musk's SpaceX [theverge.com] a lone $3 billion contract to land a crew of humans on the Moon by 2024. NASA had said it could award up to two companies for the contract, but never committed to that number, and went with SpaceX's Starship proposal. The GAO found that NASA "reserved the right to make multiple awards, a single award, or no award at all."

Musk responded to the news by tweeting "GAO" with a flexing bicep emoji.

Also at CNBC [cnbc.com] and Wccftech [wccftech.com].

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