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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado – Lockheed Martin, a privately-owned aerospace company, unveiled new details regarding its proposed architecture for NASA's astronauts landing on the Moon in 2024, announcing the announcement at the 35th Space Symposium on Wednesday. April 10th.
Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the National Space Board, has asked NASA to speed up its human landing projects on the moon and aim for a landing on the human moon in 2024, four years earlier than NASA predicted. Now, the agency's business partners, who provide most of the components for NASA's lunar plans, must also scramble to achieve the agency's new goal.
NASA has already signed a contract with Lockheed Martin for the construction of the Orion multi-crew vehicle, a spacecraft that is expected to launch the astronauts into orbit for the first time in June 2020. This mission, called Mission of exploration 1 (EM-1), will be the first leg of the path leading to NASA's landing for Lockheed. During EM-1, the unprepared Orion spacecraft will fly around the moon during a one-week round trip.
Related: Take a look inside Lockheed Martin's proposed habitat for astronauts
The early Lockheed Martin "gateway" would help NASA get to the moon faster, including only the essential components for a landing in 2024.
(Image: © Lockheed Martin)
The second phase of Lockheed's lunar program is to launch what the company calls an "early gateway" or a simplified version of NASA's proposed system. Lunar orbital platform, a lunar space station that will serve as a home base for astronauts traveling from the moon to the back. The first bridge included only the essentials for a moon landing in 2024: a propulsion module and a docking port.
NASA's director, Jim Bridenstine, said in a speech delivered Tuesday, April 9 at the Space Symposium that to reach the landing in 2024, the agency needed to not only speed up its plans initial landing in 2028, but also get rid of parts of its human exploration program that do not contribute directly to a landing in 2024.
Once the first gate is orbiting the moon, you'll see the mission's "meat and potatoes": the landing elements that would allow astronauts to descend to the moon. area. That would happen in 2022, said Rob Chambers, director of the human space exploration strategy at Lockheed Martin, at the press conference. Landing elements include an ascent step, a descent step and a control bridge. Before astronauts visit the bridge and land on the moon, the components of the undercarriage will already be tested in flight.
The lunar lander proposed by Lockheed Martin could bring NASA astronauts to the surface of the moon in 2024.
(Image: © Lockheed Martin)
The next step in Lockheed's landing plan will be Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), the first Orion crew flight scheduled for 2022 or 2023, Chambers announced. If all goes as planned, Exploration Mission-3 could launch a mission to send the astronauts to the moon in 2023 or 2024.
As NASA and Lockheed are currently working on an accelerated schedule, they need to find a way to place astronauts on the surface of the moon as quickly as possible without compromising their safety. "Our priority is to preserve safety," said Chambers, adding that the Lockheed Lunar Lander used much of the same technology as the company's Orion spacecraft, which will have flown five times before the astronauts do not finally bring it to the moon.
Lockheed officials have not yet been able to comment on the cost of their new lunar mission architecture, as NASA has not yet engaged the company to build it. And the agency may request changes that would affect the price of the project. If NASA decides to follow Lockheed's plan, the company "will have to bend the metal" by 2020, Chambers said. "I hope someone ordered a pile of aluminum!"
Email Hanneke Weitering at [email protected] or follow her. @hannekescience. Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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