Judge releases redacted lunar lander lawsuit from Bezos’ Blue Origin against NASA-SpaceX contract

The U.S. Federal Court of Claims released the redacted version of the lawsuit filed in August by Jeff Bezos‘ Blue Origin against NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX over a lucrative lunar lander contract awarded earlier this year.

“Historically a staunch advocate for prioritizing safety, NASA inexplicably disregarded key flight safety requirements for only SpaceX, in order to select and make award to a SpaceX proposal that assessed as tremendously high risk and immensely complex, even before the waiver of safety requirements,” Blue Origin wrote in the lawsuit.

Blue Origin’s complaint in court comes after the U.S. Government Accountability Office denied the company’s protest, upholding NASA’s decision.

The congressional watchdog’s ruling backed the space agency’s surprise announcement in April that NASA awarded SpaceX with a lunar lander contract worth about $2.9 billion. SpaceX was competing with Blue Origin and Dynetics for what was expected to be two contracts, before NASA only awarded a single contract due to a lower-than-expected allocation for the program from Congress.

Read the full copy of Blue Origin’s redacted lawsuit below.