Jeff Bezos offered to waive up to $2 billion in fees to NASA in an effort to help his Blue Origin LLC space company become part of a lunar-lander contract that the agency awarded solely to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The billionaire founder of Amazon.com Inc. said the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should return to an original plan to dually source its Artemis program that aims to return U.S. astronauts to the moon’s surface this decade. The agency awarded SpaceX a contract for the first mission back to the moon after opting to go with a single supplier amid budget constraints.
In an open letter Monday to Bill Nelson, NASA’s administrator, Mr. Bezos said his fee-waiving offer over roughly the next two years would remove those constraints.
“I believe this mission is important. I am honored to offer these contributions and am grateful to be in a financial position to be able to do so,” Mr. Bezos said.
SpaceX won the $2.9 billion Artemis contract in April, beating out bids by both Blue Origin and a unit of Virginia-based Leidos Holdings Inc., which provides scientific and technological services. The arrangement expanded SpaceX’s relationship with NASA, which already is contracting its Falcon 9 rockets to ferry astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station.