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Update 23:45 to correct the payload of the lunar orbit.
COLORADO SPRINGS – Japanese lunar space transportation company ispace is developing a design for a larger lunar lander to be built in the United States.
The Tokyo-based company unveiled the design of the lander at the 36th Space Symposium on August 23. The lander, under development by the company’s U.S. office in Denver, will fly as early as 2024 on the company’s third mission to the moon.
A major difference in the new design, company officials said in interviews, is payload capacity. While the ispace lander built for its first two missions in 2022 and 2023 can carry 30 kilograms of payload to the lunar surface, the new lander will have a payload capacity of 500 kilograms to the surface. It will also be able to deploy an additional 2,000 kilograms of payloads into lunar orbit.
“We took an in-depth look at what is currently available in the market and what’s to come in the next 5-10 years,” said Kursten O’Neill, program director and engineering manager at ispace US. “We anticipate this lander to be something that can support the future of lunar exploration.
In addition to increasing the payload capacity, ispace is designing the lander to survive the two-week lunar night. The lander will be able to land not only on the visible side of the Moon, but also on its far side and the poles, which will require a communication relay capability that society is still studying. The lander features modular housings to support a wide range of potential payloads, such as rovers.
O’Neill called the new lander an “evolution” of the original smaller landers in ispace. “There are things that are new,” she said. “As you grow older your structure changes and your propulsion system changes, but we have benefited from a lot of information and a lot of technical lessons learned.”
The lander recently passed a preliminary landing gear design review, allowing ispace to embark on more detailed design work. “Our intention is to launch this in the first half of 2024,” said Kyle Acierno, managing director of ispace US.
The company has partnered with General Atomics, which will take care of assembly, integration and testing of the lander. Draper provides the landing gear guidance, navigation and control system.
The lander will be designed and built entirely in the United States, a decision ispace said it took to aid efforts such as NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. “Really building it in the United States would make it more possible to offer it to US government customers,” O’Neill said. The company is said to provide lunar lander services to NASA through Draper, one of 14 companies currently part of CLPS.
Acierno said that ispace has signed memoranda of understanding with more than a dozen potential customers for the new lander, although the company has not disclosed their identities. “One of the reasons we have developed this larger lander is to meet the growing appetite that we are seeing in the commercial market,” he said.
Work on the new lander is currently supported by a $ 46 million Series C funding announced by ispace on August 4. The company has raised $ 195.5 million to date. “Ongoing funding is needed to develop multiple future missions and we will do what we need to keep moving forward,” Acierno said, but declined to discuss details of the funding.
The new lander is the exclusive focus of ispace’s US office, which opened less than a year ago and now has around 30 employees. “We will continue to hire from the engineering side and the commercial side,” he said. “Our intention is to grow significantly over the next six months. “
“We have accomplished a lot in a short period of time,” said O’Neill. “I think it speaks to people who believe in the vision for the company and want to move forward and help explore the lunar surface.”
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