Senate shoots down effort to nix funding for second lunar lander
A U.S. Senate vote last week keeps alive plans by Kent-based rocket maker Blue Origin's to take another crack at NASA’s Artemis lunar lander program.
The Senate, by a vote of 78-17, preserved $10 billion in funding for NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS), overcoming an objection by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, that it was a handout to Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, one of the world's wealthiest people.
A provision within the bill, which is aimed at boosting competitiveness with China, requires NASA to fund “design, development, testing, and evaluation of not fewer than two entities” in the program, giving contenders like Blue Origin and Huntsville, Alabama-based Dynetics another chance to submit bids, after the space agency selected SpaceX to provide one of the systems last year.
That decision prompted Blue Origin to file a complaint with the Government Accountability Office, followed by a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Though both ultimately failed, the lawsuit held up work on the program for three months, contributing to a decision by NASA to delay the lander’s launch into 2025.
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