Earlier in the year, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, Blue Origin, and the current owner of the Washington Post, attempted to offer NASA money as an incentive to break the contract with SpaceX for the lunar mission and establish contract with Blue Origin instead.

A federal judge ruled against Bezos’ Blue Origin’s lawsuit to overturn NASA contract with SpaceX, which would fly astronauts to the surface of the moon.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX had won the bid to work with NASA for this mission.

Blue Origin had attempted to force another contract with NASA but had failed and even complained to the Government Accountability Office with no avail; the GAO decided that NASA had not erred in its decision.

Blue Origin teamed up with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. However, this didn’t pan out for Blue Origin, as NASA awarded SpaceX the bid of $2.9 billion instead, which is half of Blue Origin’s proposed charge.

NASA did promise additional opportunities in the future for other competitors.

NASA and SpaceX hopes to get its Artemis astronauts on the Moon by 2024, although based on the the tie-up with Blue Origin and NASA’s work stoppage, likely will be too ambitious of a goal at this time.