{"id":45463,"date":"2024-02-14T19:03:10","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T11:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/fueling-a-spacecraft-while-its-on-a-rocket-not-trivial-spacex-official-says\/"},"modified":"2024-02-14T19:03:10","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T11:03:10","slug":"fueling-a-spacecraft-while-its-on-a-rocket-not-trivial-spacex-official-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/fueling-a-spacecraft-while-its-on-a-rocket-not-trivial-spacex-official-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Fueling a spacecraft while it\u2019s on a rocket? \u201cNot trivial,\u201d SpaceX official says."},"content":{"rendered":"

Are you ready for round two of the lunar lottery?<\/p>\n

As early as Thursday morning, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a privately developed lunar lander may launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The vehicle, built by a Houston-based company called Intuitive Machines, will be the second US-made lunar lander to launch from Florida in a little more than a month.<\/p>\n

The renaissance in American lunar landers represents the vanguard of NASA\u2019s program to return humans to the Moon and establish a more permanent presence. (No US-built vehicle has made a soft landing on the Moon in more than half a century.) Part of that is finding lower-cost transportation services, which is what these privately built lunar landers are all about.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to create a marketplace where a marketplace does not exist,\u201d Trent Martin, vice president of space systems at Intuitive Machines, said of the Moon during a teleconference this week. \u201cTo do that, we have to do it in a cost-conscious way.\u201d<\/p>\n

They also have to successfully reach the Moon. The first commercial US lander, Astrobotic\u2019s Peregrine vehicle, launched on January 8 aboard a Vulcan rocket. It sustained a serious blow when one of its propulsion tanks ruptured after the launch. At NASA\u2019s request, Astrobotic sent its spacecraft plunging back into Earth\u2019s atmosphere so it could be disposed of safely. It was not \u201cthe outcome we were hoping for,\u201d Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said afterward.<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s Intuitive Machines\u2019 turn.<\/p>\n

A propulsion challenge<\/h2>\n

Unlike most lunar landers developed to date, the Nova-C lander developed by Intuitive Machines has a main engine that uses cryogenic propellants\u2014liquid oxygen and liquid methane. Martin said the company chose these propellants because they are significantly less toxic than hypergolic fuels, and they allow Nova-C to have a more powerful engine that can get to the Moon in days rather than a month or longer.<\/p>\n

However, cryogenic fuels are more challenging to work with because they must be kept chilled, and this limits the length of time they can be stored for usage. Because of this, the Nova-C lander will be fueled just a couple of hours before liftoff.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not trivial to load the liquid oxygen and liquid methane into the vehicle,\u201d said Bill Gerstenmaier, vice president of build and flight reliability for SpaceX.<\/p>\n

The company had to modify the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket to add propellants onto the Nova C lander at the launch pad shortly before liftoff. SpaceX and Intuitive Machines completed two tests of this new procedure over the weekend. It\u2019s a complex process, and during the countdown, SpaceX actually controls six valves on the lunar lander to ensure the integrity of the fueling process. Despite the tests, a non-nominal methane temperature reading observed late Tuesday night scrubbed the first launch attempt a couple of hours before the planned liftoff early Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Now the companies will try again early on Thursday morning, with the launch scheduled for 1:05 am ET (06:05 UTC). It will be broadcast on NASA TV.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s tremendously exciting to see two private companies working together in this historic moment to deliver these six commercial payloads and six NASA payloads to the surface of the Moon,\u201d Gerstenmaier said.<\/p>\n

Getting to the Moon<\/h2>\n

After the rocket launches, it will essentially put the 2-ton Nova C spacecraft into a translunar injection. From that point, the cryogenic propulsion system will get the spacecraft to the Moon and into orbit. Assuming a launch early on Thursday, the Nova C vehicle will reach the Moon in only six days, Martin said.<\/p>\n

That would set up a landing attempt on February 22, late in the day. Beginning from a circular orbit 100 km above the Moon\u2019s surface, it will take about an hour for the spacecraft to make a powered descent toward the Malapert Crater, only 300 km from the Moon\u2019s south pole. If the landing is successful, it would represent the most poleward soft landing of any previous vehicle.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Photograph<\/p>\n

The Nova-C lander is seen at Intuitive Machines\u2019 facility in Houston, Texas.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Lee Hutchinson<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

If it makes it, of course.<\/p>\n

\u201cLanding on the Moon is extremely challenging,\u201d said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate, this week.<\/p>\n

The space agency is paying about $118 million for the delivery of six scientific payloads to the lunar surface. In addition, the Nova C vehicle is also carrying six small private payloads. After Astrobotic\u2019s failure last month, Kearns said it would not be a disaster if the Intuitive Machines lander also fails.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve always viewed these initial deliveries as a learning experience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

So why is NASA funding missions that may well fail? The hope is that private companies will eventually get the hang of flying vehicles to the Moon. And once the service becomes more routine, it will cost NASA a fraction of the price it would pay for traditionally developed lunar services. In addition, by bringing the cost down, NASA will also be opening the door to commercial development on the Moon, which should in turn open up even more access to the lunar surface.<\/p>\n

In essence, then, NASA is taking some short-term risks for some long-term gains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are you ready for round two of the lunar lottery? As early as Thursday morning, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a privately developed lunar lander may launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The vehicle, built by a Houston-based company called Intuitive Machines, will be the second US-made lunar lander to launch from Florida in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45466,"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":[503,1111,21],"class_list":["post-45463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-intuitive-machines","tag-nova-c","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45463"}],"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=45463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}