Jeff Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, is planning legal action against the US space agency NASA over a $2.9 billion contract awarded to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

In April, NASA announced that it had chosen SpaceX to develop a commercial lander that would send two US astronauts to explore more of the Moon under the Artemis programme.

In a court filing, however, Blue Origin said that there were "fundamental issues" with the contract, and described it as “unfair”.

The company, owned by the former Amazon boss (pictured), said that it continued to believe that two providers were needed to build the landing system.

Budget restrictions

NASA has admitted that the agency's current budget prevented it from selecting two companies.

In July, the US government spending watchdog, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), rejected a complaint from Blue Origin, concluding that NASA did not violate procurement law when it decided to make only one award.

"GAO further concluded there was no requirement for NASA to engage in discussions, amend, or cancel the announcement as a result of the amount of funding available for the programme,” it said.