NASA Blames Blue Origin Lawsuit Over Contracts

NASA has pushed its intended moon landing date further out, now targeting a manned mission for 2025 at the earliest. Even the new date sounds optimistic, given recent realities in NASA Programs. 

Previously, in 2019, the Trump administration set what they believed was an attainable goal for the Artemis Program to establish human presence on the moon by 2024. Vice President Pence referred to it then as another space race, invoking memories of the original 1963 Apollo program that successfully landed on the moon in 1969. While the new target of a 2025 landing still falls into the rough time frame of the original Apollo project, there is a sense that America is not just racing against China to get back to the lunar surface, but with its own past. The Apollo program looms large in the background, securing accomplishments unmatched in decades since, despite its lower level of technical refinement, lack of advanced modeling and computing, and inferior safety levels. Still, it managed to do what seems to be impossible today, landing on the moon only a few years after its inception, although it ate up to 6.6% of the federal budget at its peak.

The announcement of the Artemis delay follows a series of postponed projects in development, with no ending of shortfalls all around. From postponed space suit design targets to unmanned Artemis I launches, NASA has had to yield its ambitious schedules to reality a number of times this year. A rocky 2020 due to virus-induced lockdowns and supply chain freezes has introduced considerable unpredictability into the industrial sector, with knock-on effects on project deadlines continuing for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, additional complexity of design, and higher standards for safety have combined to make modern spacefaring tech more costly and time-consuming to produce.

The culprit for the delay in Artemis this time, however, is the Blue Origin lawsuit begun over the lack of moon lander contracts. The company vigorously protested, using every legal avenue to dispute the sole contract award for SpaceX in designing Artemis' core equipment. NASA says it delayed the program by months while they were locked in litigation. 

"We lost nearly seven months in litigation, and that likely has pushed the first human landing likely to no earlier than 2025," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. "We are estimating no earlier than 2025 for Artemis 3, which would be the human lander on the first demonstration landing." 

The recent court decision against Blue Origin's requests has allowed NASA to move forward with SpaceX on the project, with additional contracts up for grabs going forward. NASA has said they fully intend to include the company in upcoming work, but were forced into making a difficult decision to apportion their unexpectedly limited congressional funding for the program. 

FMI: www.nasa.gov