Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Loses Lead Engineer Working On Lunar Program To Elon Musk's SpaceX

A lead engineer working for Amazon.com, Inc AMZN Chair Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin’s moon lander project is set to join SpaceX.

What Happened: Nitin Arora, the Blue Origin engineer, posted the announcement Monday in a LinkedIn post. 

“It was one hell of a ride working on the lunar program. Really honored that I got a chance to work with and lead incredibly smart, passionate people over last three years,” wrote Arora. 

“Next stop, SpaceX ! I am incredibly excited and looking forward to it.”

Cats out of the bag... https://t.co/3gTCv2TDmi

— Nitin Arora (@tintin_in_space) August 17, 2021

Why It Matters: Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk also leads SpaceX, which snagged a $2.89 billion contract to develop a commercial human lander on the moon in April. 

Musk said on Sunday that he expects SpaceX to have the lunar lander ready for the moon mission before 2024.

Meanwhile, Blue Origin sued NASA over the lunar lander contract this month. While SpaceX’s bid was valued at $2.94 billion, Blue Origin’s was valued at $5.9 billion.

See Also: Elon Musk Offers SpaceX Help To NASA As Spacesuits Make Bottleneck In 2024 Moon Landing

Blue Origin and Dynetics filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office in April stating that NASA was required to make multiple awards in line with its initial announcement.

Musk took a dig at Bezos last week saying the Amazon Chair would have been on Pluto now “lobbying and lawyers” were able to influence space missions.

Musk also agreed with a Twitter user who posted that Blue Origin would have made it to orbit had it spent time on “actual” rocket science as they did protesting NASA’s Human Landing System decision.

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Photo: Courtesy of Blue Origin