GAO Rebuffs SpaceX Appeal of Orbital Sciences Contract Award

GAO Denies SpaceX Protest of Launch Contract
Space News

The U.S. government rebuffed a protest by rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp. of a contract award to rival Orbital Sciences Corp. to launch a scientific satellite for NASA.

Hawthorne, Calif.-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in October challenged the U.S. Air Force’s sole-source contract with Dulles, Va.-based Orbital to launch a NASA lunar orbiter in 2012, arguing that the work should have been competitively awarded. In denying the protest Feb. 1, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) rejected each of the main assertions made by SpaceX.

The Air Force, acting on behalf of NASA, tapped Orbital in September to launch the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) satellite on the new Minotaur 5 rocket, which is based in part on excess U.S. Peacekeeper missile motors. The mission profile calls for LADEE to be placed in a highly elliptical Earth orbit, after which the craft will use its on-board thrusters to reach lunar orbit.

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