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President Trump may be stepping down, but NASA is upholding the president’s plan to send American astronauts back to the moon. On November 12, just over a week after the election, a Huntsville, Ala., Company said it had won an $ 85 million contract amendment from NASA to build key parts of two futures lunar rockets.
NASA awarded the contract extension to Teledyne Brown Engineering for two additional launch vehicle stage adapters (LVSAs) for the Artemis II and Artemis III lunar missions. The cone-shaped LVSAs connect the center section of the space launch system (SLS) rocket to its cryogenic propulsion stage, and Teledyne said this is the largest part of the current version of the SLS in construction in Huntsville.
In the Artemis program developed by NASA, Artemis I would be an unmanned SLS launch to test the ability of the new rocket to bring an Orion capsule to the moon and into lunar orbit. Artemis II would be a second orbit mission only in 2023, this time with astronauts aboard the Orion capsule. Artemis III would transport “the first woman and the next man,” as NASA puts it, to the moon for a landing and a week-long stay. This would happen in 2024 in the vision of the Trump administration, which would have been the last year of a second Trump term if it had happened.
“(Teledyne Brown Engineering) is delighted to be a part of Artemis’ monumental spaceflight moon missions, providing its second and third LVSA units, which further reinforce our importance in the design and construction of spaceflight hardware,” said Jan Hess, President of Teledyne Brown Engineering. November 12. “We are proud to continue our decades-long partnership with MSFC, where our teams have worked tirelessly to help propel our nation beyond Earth’s gravity.
How big are these rocket parts? They are about 30 feet in diameter by 30 feet high and consist of 16 aluminum-lithium alloy panels, Hess said.
President-elect Biden has appointed his own transition team to prepare for the transfer of space policy from the Trump administration to his own. This team has not yet clarified the new president’s priorities for space, but some analysts believe Biden will continue the lunar mission but push his schedule back a few years. It could cause the first woman to walk on the moon in 2028 instead of 2024.
Rocket hardware isn’t Huntsville’s only role in the lunar mission. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in the city is leading the lander development program that will take astronauts to the lunar surface, and Dynetics in Huntsville is leading one of three teams competing to build the lander itself. even.
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