NASA payload to fly on first Blue Origin lunar lander mission

WASHINGTON — A NASA payload will hitch a trip to the moon on Blue Origin’s first lunar lander mission, scheduled to launch as quickly as subsequent March.

In an Aug. 6 procurement submitting, NASA revealed it chosen Blue Origin to fly a digicam system to check how engine plumes work together with regolith at south polar areas of the moon, accumulating knowledge to help future crewed touchdown missions. The payload, referred to as Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume Floor Research (SCALPSS), will fly by NASA’s Business Lunar Payload Providers (CLPS) program.

One copy of SCALPSS was despatched to the moon on the primary Intuitive Machines lander mission in February, accumulating restricted knowledge. A second copy of SCALPSS will fly on Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander, scheduled to launch late this yr. Nonetheless, NASA says it must fly SCALPSS on a lander with engines able to producing at the least 8,000 pounds-force (lbf) of thrust.

“The power to acquire and analyze knowledge from the plume/floor interplay involving engines with thrust ranges in extra of 8,000 lbf of thrust is a essential, and vital, precursor to NASA’s future Artemis missions and, due to the robust correlation between interactions and thrust ranges, the SCALPSS payload should be built-in on a lander having engines with thrust ranges in extra of 8,000 lbf,” the NASA doc states.

NASA concluded that the one industrial lander mission going to the lunar south pole that meets that thrust requirement from Blue Origin. Whereas the thrust stage that the lander offers is redacted within the doc, the corporate has acknowledged that the BE-7 engine it developed for the lander is able to producing as much as 10,000 pounds-force of thrust.

“Blue Origin is the one vendor conducting a industrial mission to the Lunar South Pole that meets NASA’s necessities with a thruster baseline stage of [redacted] Ibf. This industrial mission is for Blue Origin’s [redacted] Mark 1 Serial No 1 lander,” the NASA doc states. Whereas the doc redacted the identify of the lander, Blue Origin has publicized a “Pathfinder” mission for its preliminary robotic model of its Blue Moon lander, designated “MK1-SN001”, it plans to fly as an illustration mission.

The NASA doc is known as a “Justification for an Exception to Honest Alternative” and explains why it’s awarding a job order to Blue Origin with no competitors. That job order, referred to as CT-3, has not been publicized by both NASA or Blue Origin and doesn’t seem on a NASA checklist of present and future CLPS job orders.

Moreover the thrust stage, NASA justified giving Blue Origin the duty order, valued at $6.1 million, as a result of the corporate plans to launch the mission in 2025. (The precise date of the launch is redacted.) “To tell Artemis’ first mission, and permit for any essential modifications, SCALPSS should be delivered to the Lunar floor by the top of calendar yr 2025,” the company acknowledged.

In an Aug. 1 utility to the Federal Communications Fee, Blue Origin offered different particulars in regards to the Blue Moon Pathfinder mission. The corporate mentioned the mission is scheduled to launch as quickly as March 2025 on its New Glenn rocket. The corporate had beforehand disclosed flying the Pathfinder mission in 2025.

“Blue Moon MK1 Pathfinder is a single-launch, lunar cargo lander that can land on the lunar floor and pave the best way for protected, dependable, and inexpensive entry to the lunar atmosphere,” the corporate acknowledged, and “will show out vital methods for future Blue Moon missions.”

New Glenn will place Blue Moon into low Earth orbit, remaining there for 3 to 4 orbits to do preliminary checkouts. It’ll then increase its apogee for extra exams, together with of its high-gain antenna system, earlier than performing a translunar injection maneuver to go to the moon, coming into a low lunar orbit 5 to seven days later. The spacecraft will conduct “a number of subsystem characterization actions” in lunar orbit earlier than making an attempt a touchdown.

“Blue Moon MK1 Pathfinder will host a set of sensors and cameras. The gear will assist hone area flight expertise wanted for the formidable future Blue Origin is planning within the years to return by offering environmental knowledge and imaging for future missions,” the corporate mentioned in its FCC submitting, which didn’t point out particularly the NASA SCALPSS payload.

The FCC submitting additionally illustrates the scale of Blue Moon, which even in its Mark 1 model is way bigger than different industrial lunar landers. The spacecraft is 8.05 meters tall with a diameter of three.08 meters. The spacecraft has a completely fueled, or moist, mass of as much as 21,350 kilograms. The corporate beforehand mentioned Blue Moon Mark 1 can ship as much as three tons of payload to the lunar floor.

The corporate says applied sciences developed for the Mark 1 model of Blue Moon will help work on the Mark 2 model, which is designed to hold astronauts to and from the lunar floor. NASA chosen Blue Origin final yr for a second Human Touchdown System (HLS) award to develop and reveal Blue Moon Mark 2 after the company picked SpaceX’s Starship for the primary HLS award in 2021.

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