NASA is looking to quickly launch a lunar lander

This article was originally published in SpaceNews magazine on May 20, 2019.

Although NASA's new goal of placing humans on the moon in five years may seem aggressive, most of the material needed to complete this mission is already under development or will be soon.

The Space Launch System and Orion have been under construction for years and, despite the delays, they are expected to be ready to transport astronauts to the moon by 2024. NASA is currently studying proposals for the first element of a now minimized gateway , the Power and Propulsion. Element and plans to award a contract by the summer. The only other element of this initial gateway, a modest habitat and a docking node, will likely be based on the housing module concepts that several companies are currently developing.

The exception is the component that is arguably the most essential part of a lunar landing: the lunar lander itself.

Prior to Vice President Mike Pence's March 26 announcement, announcing the lunar landing goal for 2024, NASA was slowly preparing for the planning for the crewed lunar landing gear. Earlier this year, NASA solicited proposals for studies on two landing gear elements, a descent stage and a transfer vehicle to move the bridge landing gear to a low lunar orbit. These proposals were due to NASA the day before the fateful speech of Pence.

NASA changed pace after the speech, announcing a week later that it would also solicit proposals for a rising phase. At the end of April, he again changed his mind: he now wanted proposals for complete landing systems – climb phase, descent phase and transfer vehicle – with a formal solicitation expected from the airport. here this summer. To meet the 2024 deadline, the agency and industry say there is no time to waste.

Two companies, two landing gear

Fortunately for NASA, there is a wide range of ideas on how to develop such landers – and how to unveil them. At one extreme, Blue Origin has shown its lunar lander Blue Moon. The company invited the media and other guests, representing NASA officials and scientists from around the world, to meet Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt in a ballroom held in Washington. Convention Center on May 9, a few hours after the closing of the Satellite 2019 conference.

Inside the ballroom, there was a blue mood lighting, starred landscapes on the walls and a stage topped with a curtain. On this stage, the founder of the company, Jeff Bezos, appeared. He spent half an hour talking about his vision of humanity's future in space, as well as his desire to build an infrastructure to realize that vision, such as the New Shepard and New Glenn launchers.

"The moon also needs infrastructure," he said. "Let me show you something." The curtain rose, revealing a life-size model of an updated version of the Blue Moon Lander that the company had discussed for the first time more than two years ago. In its current iteration, Blue Moon can carry 3.6 metric tons up to the lunar surface with the help of a new rocket engine called BE-7 that the company is developing, powered by Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

Bezos recounted a visit to the model, even using a camera mounted on a crane to look over the undercarriage, a platform on which payloads would be mounted. He checked off some of his technical specifications, such as optical communications for gigabit data rates and terrain navigation for accurate landings. "It's an incredible vehicle," he says, "and it's on the moon."

When Blue Origin started discussing Blue Moon, they described it as a freight lander only, and the exposed version was designed for that. However, the company also has a larger version of the undercarriage with "stretched" propellant tanks capable of carrying 6.5 tons of cargo to the surface. In his presentation, Bezos showed an illustration of a stage of ascent over the LG for the transport of astronauts. Another illustration shows this larger lander with a step up on the moon, with astronauts walking to the surface nearby.

A company official, speaking after the event, confirmed that Blue Origin was planning to develop its own phase of rise for Blue Moon. The company plans to have the initial descent phase ready to fly in 2023, with the stretched version, as well as the ascent phase, tested and ready to carry the astronauts in 2024.

Bezos approved the 2024 deadline and suggested that he could respect it because of his lead over Blue Moon. "I like that, it's the right thing to do," he said about the 2024 goal announced in Pence's speech: "We can help keep this schedule, but only because we started three years ago. "

About a month before Bezos unveiled his life-size model of Blue Moon, Lockheed Martin presented his own concepts for the lunar earthlings. On April 10, in a small conference room of the 35th Symposium on Space Colorado Springs, representatives of the company, without the benefit of the presence of special guests or life-size mock-ups, explained how they planned to take advantage of Orion technology for a lunar lander at 20:24.

The concept they presented was not their first idea of ​​the lunar lander. Six months ago, they had described a giant floor reusable lunar landing gear that could carry four people and operate for two weeks on the surface. The rush to 2024, however, canceled the more ambitious design of a smaller two-story undercarriage that could be built quickly.

"We looked at it as fast as possible," said Tim Cichan, space exploration architect at Lockheed Martin, and concluded that a two-story lander could be ready by 2024. But, did he added, "it will be a challenge."

The descent phase is based on the concepts that Lockheed Martin submitted to NASA in March in the call for proposals for the descent phases, about which the company gave few details. The upper floor would use many Orion elements, including a human-designed pressure device and a version of the print propulsion system for the Orion service module.

The LG is part of a global architecture very close to what NASA has since described for the lunar landing of 2024, including the development of a minimal bridge. The lander would be launched at the bridge on commercial rockets, the crew to follow an SLS / Orion mission.

The Lockheed lander uses Orion technology, but its construction still takes time. Rob Chambers, Director of Manned Spaceflight and Business Development at Lockheed Martin, said it took about four years from the time the company began production on an Orion spacecraft to be ready for launch.

This means that the LG must start working by the beginning of 2020 to be able to be launched in the bridge early in 2024 to allow a landing later in the year. "By the end of this year, materials must begin to arrive and people under contract start building to print what exists today and that we can use safely," he said. declared. "We have to bend the metal next year."

How to buy a lunar lander

The accelerated goal of bringing humans back to the moon determines not only how the undercarriages will be designed, but also how they will be acquired. Prior to Pence's speech, NASA had envisioned that the companies would develop the three elements of the undercarriage separately, NASA overseeing the overall architecture and integrating the components.

With the new deadline of 2024, NASA plans to give more control to the industry. The revised solicitation for lunar landing gear will require integrated concepts, which will give companies the opportunity to acquire alternative approaches to NASA's original three-storey landing gear concept.

"Initially, we thought we would keep three pieces and NASA would integrate them," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's assistant director for human exploration and operations, at a public meeting held at the headquarters of NASA. NASA May 14th. For speed, it is best to let the commercial sector do it. "This, he adds, gives companies the flexibility to come up with a design that meets NASA's goals and schedule.

NASA is also likely to deviate from a conventional cost-plus contract for the lunar lander. "We would essentially buy a service to transport our astronauts from the bridge to the moon, upon their return," said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine at City Hall. "We are turning to these service providers to create the absolute best ideas they have."

This city hall took place one day after the White House published its budget amendment for NASA, which targeted $ 1.6 billion in additional funding for NASA in 2020. Of this total, $ 1 billion would go to to the development of the lunar lander, specifically "an integrated commercial lander. "

Gerstenmaier said at the city council meeting that he wanted to have the funding as soon as possible after the start of the fiscal year, so that "we can start to put in place the contracts that are actually starting to build the material that gives us a lander. "

This could be difficult because NASA will likely start the fiscal year with a permanent resolution that keeps the agency at 2019 funding levels and prevents the launch of new programs. Bridenstine, who spoke on May 14 at the Humans to Mars Summit, said that there could be "opportunities" to include language in any CR, thus giving the NASA the flexibility to launch projects related to the lunar lander. "But it goes well beyond my salary," he added.

On May 16, NASA announced that it had selected 11 companies, including Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin, to design descent modules and transfer stages, based on proposals submitted by these companies in March. Scholarships, for studies and prototypes of equipment, have a total value of only $ 45.5 million, with firms incurring around 20% of costs.

NASA used this announcement to emphasize that the purchase of lunar landing gear would not proceed as usual. "To accelerate our return to the moon, we are testing our traditional working methods," said Marshall Smith, director of the human lunar exploration program at NASA's headquarters. "We're going to streamline everything from purchasing to partnerships to hardware development and even operations."

Speaking before the House of Commons Scientific Committee Space Subcommittee on May 8, Gerstenmaier said that NASA's approach to crewed landing gear could depend on the ability of companies to use smaller aircraft. robotic undercarriages as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

"Depending on the efficiency of this system," he said, "we may have a chance to judge the industry's ability to meet the challenges of the human-grade landing gear."

To meet the deadline of 2024, NASA may have no choice but to challenge the industry to build the spacecraft that allows astronauts to land on their own. the moon.