“As early as next week, we’ll be engaging industry for their input on how to best fashion and enable competition for this very important acquisition,” said Kirasich at the media briefing. Agency officials said they will accelerate planning for that contract, where NASA will procure landing services for multiple missions. However, after that crewed demonstration mission NASA will procure landing services through a separate contract. “We want to make sure that everything is checked out and everything is ready” before putting NASA astronauts on the spacecraft, said Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA HLS program manager. That Option A award will support development of the Starship lunar lander, and include at least one uncrewed test flight to land on the lunar surface before NASA proceeds with a crewed mission. “I do not have enough funding available to even attempt to negotiate a price from Blue Origin that could potentially enable a contract award.”ĭynetics fared even worse, with Lueders concluding that its proposal “is overall of limited merit and is only somewhat in alignment with the objectives as set forth in this solicitation.” Lueders, the source selection authority for HLS, concluded that while Blue Origin’s proposal “has merit,” she did not select it for a second Option A award “because I find that its proposal does not present sufficient value to the Government” and because of the limited funding after selecting SpaceX for one award. Blue Origin’s price was “significantly higher” than SpaceX and Dynetics was “significantly higher” than Blue Origin. In a source selection statement, NASA said that SpaceX’s price was lower than the other two teams, led by Blue Origin and Dynetics, “by a wide margin.” SpaceX received a technical rating of “Acceptable” and management rating of “Outstanding,” compared to a technical rating of “Acceptable” and management rating of “Very Good” for Blue Origin and “Marginal” and “Very Good” ratings for Dynetics. “We weighed a lot of things, including what we’re getting from the demonstration mission, what we want for our potential future procurement for our sustainable landers, and it was in NASA’s best interest, along with the budget that was there, for us to award to one,” Kathy Lueders, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said. The agency received $850 million for the HLS program in fiscal year 2021, about one-fourth its original request. However, in a hastily arranged call with reporters to announce the selection of only SpaceX, officials acknowledged that limited budgets forced them to select only SpaceX. It’s on our minds,” Mark Kirasich, director of the advanced exploration systems division at NASA, said in February. “Competition - having multiple suppliers for us - is an extremely important principle. NASA officials previously stated they would attempt to make more than one Option A award in order to preserve competition in the program. SpaceX offered a version of its Starship vehicle, launched on its Super Heavy booster and refueled in low Earth orbit before going to the moon. SpaceX was one of three companies that received initial HLS contracts nearly one year ago for early design work on their lander concepts. The fixed-price, milestone-based contract has a total value of $2.89 billion. NASA announced April 16 that it awarded a contract to SpaceX for Option A of the Human Landing System (HLS) program, which covers development of a crewed lunar lander and a demonstration mission. WASHINGTON - NASA has selected SpaceX as the sole company to win a contract to develop and demonstrate a crewed lunar lander, while keeping the door open for others to compete for future missions.
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