The lawsuit by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin against the US government and SpaceX has yet again been delayed due to paginations issues as the Department of Justice (DOJ) struggled to add page numbers to about 1,700 documents before the set deadline.
The lawsuit was initially filed after NASA presented Elon Musk’s SpaceX the sole contract to develop a moon lander for its Artemis missions despite the government-owned space agency stating that it would select two companies.
It is to be noted that the DOJ had earlier requested a one-week extension on August 27, citing difficulties in getting 7GB of case records into a sharable format. The documents were to be moved to DVDs, cited sources.
The DOJ asked for another extension last, claiming that they encountered a new issue with around 1,700 case records that totaled over 16GB. DOJ lawyers mentioned that the record is fully complete, organized in tabs and subtabs, and fully indexed. However, the procedure of numbering each page of the record is taking longer than expected, and it will not be finished by the deadline.
The Department of Justice requested a four-day extension to its administrative deadline for the records, providing government employees the Labor Day weekend to finish pagination. Meanwhile, the DOJ stated it would deliver un-paginated DVDs of the files to the parties as placeholders.
Delays in the lawsuit would obstruct SpaceX's contract proceedings and affect the timeline for NASA's planned Artemis moon missions. In April, work on the USD 2.9 billion deal was put on hold, then restarted, and then placed on hold again.
NASA has suspended work on SpaceX's contract until the US Court of Federal Claims case resolves, with a November 1 resumption date initially set.
In view of the recent setbacks, DOJ attorneys last week recommended a new date of November 8 for the commencement, although the court records did not indicate whether NASA or the parties had approved that date.
As per reliable sources, Adobe previously stated that it was collaborating directly with the Department of Justice to assist with the government's PDF challenges.