{"id":12828,"date":"2019-11-19T21:03:43","date_gmt":"2019-11-19T13:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacex-offering-starship-to-nasa-for-lunar-landing-missions\/"},"modified":"2019-11-19T21:03:43","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T13:03:43","slug":"spacex-offering-starship-to-nasa-for-lunar-landing-missions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacex-offering-starship-to-nasa-for-lunar-landing-missions\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX offering Starship to NASA for lunar landing missions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Artist\u2019s concept of SpaceX\u2019s Starship on the lunar surface. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SpaceX is eligible to propose using its next-generation Starship vehicle to carry NASA robotic science payloads to the lunar surface, the U.S. space agency announced Monday, on missions that could precede future Starship flights with people on-board.<\/p>\n

SpaceX is one of five companies NASA selected Monday to join a roster of commercial transportation providers to deliver scientific instruments and technology demonstration packages to the moon through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor CLPS, we offered the Starship and Super Heavy launch capability,\u201d said Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX\u2019s president and chief operating officer. \u201cThat capability far exceeds the mass that CLPS was looking for, but we think that brings pretty extraordinary capability to NASA, both for the CLPS program and others. We can bring about 100 metric tons to the moon, and certainly return more.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA requires the CLPS providers to be capable of delivering at least 22 pounds, or 10 kilograms, of payload mass to the moon.<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s Starship and Super Heavy vehicles are the two main pieces of the company\u2019s next-generation launch system. The combined launcher will stand 387 feet (118 meters) tall and measure 50 percent wider than the fuselage of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.<\/p>\n

Shotwell said SpaceX, founded and led by billionaire Elon Musk, aims to land a Starship on the moon in 2022. She said robotic Starship missions, such as flights contracted through NASA\u2019s CLPS program, will pave the way for crewed Starship launches.<\/p>\n

The Starship was \u201coriginally conceived to carry people,\u201d Shotwell said, similar to the way SpaceX developed a cargo variant of the Dragon capsule before designing and building an upgraded human-rated Dragon spacecraft. \u201cWe\u2019re leveraging NASA initially for cargo and science, so I think it\u2019s a nice stepping stone and a nice path to getting comfortable with the technology \u2026 so that it\u2019s reliable enough to put people on-board.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX is building prototypes of the Starship vehicle in Texas and Florida, and atmospheric test flights could begin within weeks or months. The Starship will serve as a second stage on top of the Super Heavy booster, which SpaceX plans to build and test after the Starship.<\/p>\n

The Super Heavy and Starship, both designed for reuse, will be powered by SpaceX\u2019s methane-fueled Raptor rocket engines. SpaceX intends to land the Super Heavy on the ground similar to the way the company lands Falcon rocket boosters. The Starship will be similarly capable of vertical landings on Earth, or on other planetary surfaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarship, right now, (for) the early missions, we\u2019re very focused on cargo, both satellite delivery to orbit, science delivery to the surface of the moon, m cargo and science to the surface of Mars,\u201d she said. \u201cThen we\u2019ll be looking at some crew flights.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other companies selected by NASA to join the agency\u2019s list of CLPS providers Monday were Blue Origin, Ceres Robotics, Sierra Nevada Corp. and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. They join Astrobotic, Deep Space Systems, Draper, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Lockheed Martin, Masten Space Systems, Moon Express and Orbit Beyond, the nine companies selected as CLPS providers last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a need and saw a need to bring on some additional providers that had enhanced lander capabilities,\u201d said Steve Clarke, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate. \u201cThis is based on \u2026 the agency\u2019s objectives to get to the moon as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clarke said NASA received eight proposals to join the roster of CLPS providers. The agency picked five companies to \u201con-ramp\u201d to the CLPS program.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of them bring to the table different strengths and different ideas, and that\u2019s what we want to bring as NASA continues to lean forward and use commercial services to explore the moon,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cWe want as many \u2026 diverse ideas as we can on the table. So we look forward to hearing reading and assessing those ideas when we put out these task orders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blue Origin\u2019s Blue Moon cargo lander can deliver nearly 8,000 pounds, or 3.6 metric tons, of payload equipment to the lunar surface. Brent Sherwood, Blue Origin\u2019s senior vice president of advanced development programs, said Monday that the Blue Moon lander is designed to survive the two-week-long lunar night and can launch on the company\u2019s New Glenn rocket.<\/p>\n

John Roth, vice president of business development at Sierra Nevada\u2019s space systems division, said the company will modify existing small satellite platforms for lunar lander missions to haul lighter payloads to the moon. Technologies developed for Sierra Nevada\u2019s Dream Chaser space station cargo transporter could be used to carry heavier equipment to the lunar surface, Roth said.<\/p>\n

The other companies\u2019 initial lander designs are capable of carrying smaller payload packages to the moon.<\/p>\n

Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems specializes in building CubeSats and other small satellites, and Ceres Robotics is a Silicon Valley startup founded in 2017 to develop vehicles to explore the surfaces of the moon, Mars, asteroids and other planetary bodies.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Artist\u2019s concept of Blue Origin\u2019s Blue Moon lander. Credit: Blue Origin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA started the CLPS program to purchase unpiloted rides to the moon for the agency\u2019s scientific payloads aboard privately-owned spacecraft. The missions are precursors for future human expeditions to the moon planned in NASA\u2019s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface by the end of 2024.<\/p>\n

The 14 companies now part of the CLPS program are eligible to compete for NASA contracts to ferry scientific instruments to the moon. NASA is releasing a series of task orders for specific mission objectives, and the companies can submit bids for rights to conduct the missions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe services we are buying are buying, or are procuring, are end-to-end,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cThe companies that we award task orders are responsible for securing a ride on a launch vehicle, and of course, delivering our instruments or payloads to the surface, and then actually enabling us to operate those instruments or payloads on the surface of the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA selected three companies \u2014 Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and Orbit Beyond \u2014 for the first CLPS task orders in May. NASA terminated the task order with Orbit Beyond in July, but the company remains eligible for future CLPS contracts.<\/p>\n

Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines remain on contract with NASA to deliver NASA science instruments to the moon\u2019s surface in July 2021.<\/p>\n

None of NASA\u2019s 14 CLPS providers have a lunar lander currently in operation.<\/p>\n

Firefly Aerospace\u2019s CLPS proposal includes plans to build a U.S. version of the Israeli Beresheet lander, a privately-funded mission that crashed on the moon during a landing attempt in April.<\/p>\n

In addition to its role in providing delivery services for NASA science payloads, the CLPS program will advance lunar landing technologies that could be useful on a future human-rated lander, according to NASA officials.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also an experiment in the commercial procurement of lunar transportation services, an example NASA is following in the multibillion-dollar procurement of a human-rated lander for the Artemis program.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin submitted a lander proposal derived from the Blue Moon spacecraft in response to NASA\u2019s Human Landing System solicitation earlier this month. Boeing also confirmed it bid for an HLS contract.<\/p>\n

Other companies, including SpaceX, are also expected to have submitted human-rated lander proposals.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist\u2019s concept of SpaceX\u2019s Starship on the lunar surface. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX is eligible to propose using its next-generation Starship vehicle to carry NASA robotic science payloads to the lunar surface, the U.S. space agency announced Monday, on missions that could precede future Starship flights with people on-board. SpaceX is one of five companies NASA […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[304,1508,509,2451,322,291,625,190],"class_list":["post-12828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-artemis","tag-blue-moon","tag-blue-origin","tag-ceres-robotics","tag-clps","tag-commercial-space","tag-moon","tag-nasa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}