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A private team led by Jeff Bezos’ space flight company Blue origin delivered a mock-up of its crewed lunar lander to NASA for testing.
At the end of April, NASA announced that it had provided funding to three business groups – SpaceX, Dynetics and the “national team” led by Blue Origin – to develop human landing systems for the agency Artemis lunar exploration program.
These companies need to work fast, given that NASA wants to land two astronauts near the moon’s south pole in 2024. And the national team has now given the agency some material to work with: an engineering mockup to large-scale lunar lander, which was delivered to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston today (August 20).
Related: NASA wants private moon landers from 3 companies. Here is how they will work.
“Testing this engineering mockup for crew interaction is a step towards making this historic mission a reality,” Brent Sherwood, vice president of advanced development programs at Blue Origin, said in a press release.
“The learning we get from large-scale models cannot be done otherwise,” Sherwood said. “Benefiting from NASA’s expertise and feedback at this early stage allows us to develop a secure trading system that meets the agency’s needs.”
The national team consists of Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. The companies are developing a landing system with three separate parts: a descent element to transport astronauts to the lunar surface, an ascension element to launch them out of the moon and a transfer element, a propulsion stage that sends the element of descent from the lunar orbit downwards. towards the gray dirt.
The newly delivered mockup, which stands over 12 meters high, features the elements of ascent and descent, representatives from Blue Origin said. He will remain with JSC until early 2021.
The descent stage is based on that of Blue Origin Blue Moon robotic lunar lander, which is also in development. The ascent stage takes advantage of much of the technology used by NASA Orion Crew Capsule, of which Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor. Orion is an integral part of the Artemis program; astronauts will launch from Earth aboard the capsule, which will climb to the top of the enormous Space launch system rocket.
The transfer stage also has a considerable heritage; it is based on the Northrop Grumman robot Cygnus cargo ship, which has been transporting goods to the International Space Station for NASA since 2013.
The national team, Dynetics and SpaceX shared $ 967 million in funding from NASA, which is 10 months of development work. The agency will then select one or more of the teams to continue to evolve their landing systems, ultimately securing crewed flights among the options that are still on the table in 2024 and beyond.
Dynetics is developing a two-stage landing system and SpaceX has offered to use its Spaceship colonizing Mars for the work of Artemis.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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