Tag: Artemis

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NASA overhauls moon plan — and Blue Origin may benefit

Illustration: Blue Moon lander on lunar surface
An artist’s conception shows the integrated design for the Blue Moon lander. (Blue Origin Illustration)

NASA is reworking its Artemis moon program to add a test mission for commercial lunar landers in low Earth orbit next year, with a crewed lunar landing to follow in 2028 at the earliest. The revised plan raises the profile of the Blue Moon lander that’s being built by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.

“We’re all in!” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a post to X.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who took up his post last December, announced the schedule shift today. “This is going to be our pathway back to the moon,” he said.

The next step in the pathway is the same as it has been: NASA is getting set to use its giant Space Launch System rocket to launch four astronauts on a 10-day trip around the moon in an Orion capsule. That Artemis 2 mission is currently set for no earlier than April, due to a helium leak that forced this week’s rocket rollback from the launch pad for troubleshooting.

NASA’s previous plan called for following up on Artemis 2 with a crewed lunar landing next year for Artemis 3. However, the development of the SpaceX Starship lander for that mission has proceeded more slowly than expected.

Under the revised architecture, Artemis 3 becomes a crewed orbital test for SpaceX’s Starship and/or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander. The mission could also test the next-generation spacesuits that are being developed for extravehicular activities. The Artemis program’s first crewed lunar landing would follow in 2028, presumably using either Starship or Blue Moon.

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Cosmic Space

Moon rocket goes back to the garage for troubleshooting

SLS rocket and Orion crew spacecraft inside VAB
NASA has returned its Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule to the Vehicle Assembly Building. (NASA Photo / Cory Huston)

NASA rolled the giant rocket that’s slated to launch four astronauts on a round-the-moon trip back to its garage today to troubleshoot a problem with its helium pressurization system.

The Space Launch System rocket, topped by an Orion crew capsule, returned to the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at about 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT), NASA said. It took more than 10 hours for NASA’s crawler-transporter to make the 4-mile trip from Launch Complex 39B.

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GeekWire

Helium problem forces NASA to delay moon mission

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and troubleshooting team at launch pad with SLS rocket in background
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, far left, accompanies a troubleshooting team at the Artemis 2 launch pad. (NASA Photo)

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says the giant rocket set to send four astronauts around the moon for the history-making Artemis 2 mission must be rolled back from its launch pad to troubleshoot a technical problem.

The 10-day mission, previously scheduled for as soon as March, is now postponed until April at the earliest. “I understand people are disappointed by this development,” Isaacman said in a posting to X. “That disappointment is felt most by the team at NASA, who have been working tirelessly to prepare for this great endeavor.”

The technical issue cropped up just days after a successful launch-pad rehearsal at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Data from the Space Launch System rocket’s upper stage registered an interruption in the flow of helium, which is used to pressurize the propellant tanks and purge the engines. “Last evening, the team was unable to get helium flow through the vehicle,” Isaacman wrote today. “This occurred during a routine operation to repressurize the system.”

Isaacman said the helium pressurization system worked correctly during this week’s wet dress rehearsal. For what it’s worth, a problem with a helium valve cropped up during preparations for the uncrewed Artemis 1 round-the-moon mission in 2022, leading NASA managers to take corrective actions.

The current problem could be due to a failure at any of several points in the helium system. “Regardless of the potential fault, accessing and remediating any of these issues can only be performed in the VAB,” said Isaacman, referring to the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building where the SLS and its Orion crew capsule were stacked for launch.

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GeekWire

NASA completes rehearsal for Artemis moon launch

SLS rocket illuminated by lights at launch pad
NASA's Space Launch System rocket stands on its Florida launch pad. (NASA Photo / Aubrey Gemignani)

NASA counted down to T-minus 29 seconds during a smooth rehearsal for a historic launch that could send astronauts around the moon for the first time in more than half a century.

The run-through at Launch Complex 39B, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, was known as a wet dress rehearsal because it involved filling up the propellant tanks on NASA’s Space Launch System, a 322-foot-tall rocket that made its debut with 2022’s uncrewed Artemis 1 mission.

The only major component that was missing at the launch pad was the crew. NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, the commander for the Artemis 2 mission, said in a posting to X that he was watching the proceedings from Launch Control.

Once NASA reviews the results of the two-day rehearsal, mission managers will decide whether to give the final go-ahead for the Artemis 2 crew’s 10-day trip around the moon and back.

Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said the space agency is targeting March 6 for liftoff. “Every night I look at the moon, and I see it, and I get real excited because I can really feel she’s calling us,” she told reporters today. “And we’re ready.”

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GeekWire

Interlune digs into opportunities for lunar construction

Interlune prototype excavator being tested on rocky patch of land
Interlune and Vermeer worked together to test a full-scale prototype of an excavator with auxiliary components. (Interlune / Vermeer Photo)

Interlune is leveraging a $150,000 NASA contract to develop develop lunar trenching and excavation technology — and although the primary goal is to extract valuable helium-3 from moon dirt, the project also signals the company’s broader play for lunar infrastructure.

Interlune’s work on the Small Business Technology Transfer Phase 1 contract, done in partnership with the Colorado School of Mines, demonstrates that the Seattle-based startup’s business model isn’t limited to helium-3. In the years ahead, the technologies pioneered by Interlune for resource extraction can also be used for building roads, base camps and other construction projects on the moon.

For example, the excavator that’s the focus of the NASA funding — known as the Scalable Implement for Lunar Trenching, or SILT — will support Interlune’ plan to sift through tons of lunar soil. But it will also support NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to establish a sustainable lunar presence in the 2030s.

“We’re looking at some other tools that would move regolith around, or prepare a site for making a road or building a radiation berm, burying a certain piece of infrastructure like a nuclear reactor,” Interlune CEO Rob Meyerson told me. “So, we’re very interested in participating in the Artemis program in broader ways, and we think the technology we’re developing for helium-3 extraction can support that.”

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GeekWire

NASA’s moon rocket makes the slow trip to its launch pad

Space Launch System rocket on its way to launch pad with "Drive Safely" sign in foreground
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and its mobile launcher head for the launch pad at a top speed of 1 mph. (NASA Photo / Keegan Barber)

NASA’s massive Space Launch System rocket crept toward its Florida launch pad today at a top speed of about 1 mph, marking the first step in a journey that will eventually send astronauts around the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

The 4-mile trek to Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center began at 7 a.m. ET (4 a.m. PT) and lasted until evening. Because the rocket with its mobile launcher stands more than 300 feet tall and weighs millions of pounds, the trip required the use of a crawler-transporter — the same vehicle used for the Apollo and space shuttle programs, now upgraded for NASA’s Artemis moon program.

Liftoff for the Artemis 2 mission could come as early as March, but there’s lots to be done in the weeks ahead. After today’s rollout, the mission team will conduct a thorough checkout of the Space Launch System and its Orion crew spacecraft. NASA also aims to conduct a “wet dress rehearsal,” during which the launch team will fuel the rocket and count down to roughly T-minus 30 seconds. (Update: The first such rehearsal took place on Feb. 2 but had to be called off at about T-minus 5 minutes due to a liquid hydrogen leak.)

“We have, I think, zero intention of communicating an actual launch date until we get through wet dress,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told reporters.

Artemis 2 is slated to send three NASA astronauts and one Canadian astronaut on a 10-day journey tracing a figure-8 route around the moon. The trip will take them as far as 4,800 miles beyond the lunar far side — farther out than any human has gone before.

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GeekWire

Year in Space: Get ready for magnificent moon missions

Orion making a lunar flyby
An artist’s conception shows the Orion spacecraft’s main engine firing during a lunar flyby. (NASA Illustration)

Lunar missions once felt like the domain of history books rather than current events, but an upcoming trip around the moon is poised to generate headlines at a level not seen since the Apollo era.

NASA’s Artemis 2 mission, which is due to launch four astronauts on a round-the-moon journey as a warmup for a future lunar landing, is shaping up as the spaceflight highlight of 2026. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who took the agency’s helm this month after a tumultuous year, says it’s the top item on his must-see list.

“What’s not to be excited about?” he said last week on CNBC. “We’re sending American astronauts around the moon. It’s the first time we’ve done that in a half-century. … We’re weeks away, potentially a month or two away at most from sending American astronauts around the moon again.”

The Pacific Northwest plays a significant role in the back-to-moon campaign. For example, L3Harris Technologies’ team in Redmond, Wash., built thrusters for Artemis 2’s Orion crew vehicle. And Artemis 2 isn’t the only upcoming moon mission with Seattle-area connections: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, headquartered in Kent, plans to send an uncrewed Blue Moon Mark 1 lander to the lunar surface in 2026 to help NASA get set for future moon trips.

“We are taking our first steps to help open up the lunar frontier for all of humanity,” Paul Brower, Blue Origin’s director of lunar operations, said in a recent LinkedIn post.

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Fiction Science Club

How billionaires boost America in space race with China

Blended image of Elon Musk celebrating after launch of NASA astronauts, and Jeff Bezos celebrating after first crewed New Shepard launch
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have both celebrated space victories. (Left: GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota, 2020. Right: Blue Origin Photo, 2021)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has only just begun to launch a heavy-lift rocket that was a decade in the making — its orbital-class New Glenn launch vehicle, which had its first flight in January. But it’s already planning something even bigger to rival Starship, the super-rocket built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Bezos simply isn’t ready to share those plans yet.

Actually, a super-heavy-lift rocket concept known as New Armstrong (named in honor of first moonwalker Neil Armstrong) has been talked about for almost as long as New Glenn (whose name pays tribute to John Glenn, the first American in orbit). Bezos mentioned the idea way back in 2016, but said at the time that it was “a story for the future.”

Details about New Armstrong are still a story for the future, according to an account in “Rocket Dreams,” a book about the billionaire space race written by Washington Post staff writer Christian Davenport.

“They’ve been very quiet about it,” Davenport says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “I asked Jeff specifically about that at the New Glenn launch, and he didn’t want to talk about it.”

In the book, he quotes Bezos as saying only that “we are working on a vehicle that will come after New Glenn and lift more mass.”

New Armstrong is one of the few mysteries that Davenport wasn’t able to crack in his account of the space rivalry between Bezos and Musk. Davenport first addressed that rivalry seven years ago in a book titled “Space Barons,” but this updated saga is set in the context of an even bigger rivalry between America and China. Both nations are aiming to send astronauts to the moon by 2030, if not before.

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GeekWire

NASA thanks suppliers for work on the next big moonshot

NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg in lab at L3Harris / Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond, Wash.
NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg faces the TV cameras at L3Harris’ Aerojet Rocketdyne facility in Redmond, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

REDMOND, Wash. — The first crewed flight around the moon in more than 50 years is still months away, but NASA is already saying thank you to L3Harris Technologies’ Aerojet Rocketdyne segment and other suppliers who are making the trip possible.

Today, NASA’s road trip brought agency officials — plus astronaut Woody Hoburg — to the L3Harris facility in Redmond, which has contributed propulsion systems to NASA missions ranging from space shuttle flights to the Voyager probes’ journeys to the edge of the solar system.

Now NASA is getting ready to launch four astronauts on a round-the-moon mission known as Artemis 2, powered in part by hardware built in Redmond. Hoburg, who spent six months on the International Space Station in 2023 and is awaiting his next crew assignment, told an audience of about 200 L3Harris employees and VIPs that the Artemis 2 crew is well aware of the company’s contribution.

“They’re depending on you, and they know they can count on you,” he said. “Thank you for all the hard work you’re doing to make this amazing adventure possible.”

The Artemis 2 mission is currently targeted for launch next April, or perhaps even earlier, said Howard Hu, NASA’s program manager for the Orion crew vehicle. The mission after that, Artemis 3, is due to lift off no earlier than mid-2027 with the goal of landing astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.

L3Harris’ Aerojet Redmond team delivered the hardware for those two Artemis missions — including auxiliary engines for Orion’s European-built service module — years ago. Now the team is working on thrusters for missions as far out as Artemis 8, which is scheduled to go the moon no earlier than 2033.

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Universe Today

NASA picks three teams to work on lunar terrain vehicle

NASA illustration showing Lunar Terrain Vehicle on moon's surface
An artist's conception shows NASA's generic concept for the Lunar Terrain Vehicle. (NASA Illustration)

Some of the biggest names in aerospace — and the automotive industry — will play roles in putting NASA astronauts in the driver’s seat for roving around on the moon.

The space agency today selected three teams to develop the capabilities for a lunar terrain vehicle, or LTV, which astronauts could use during Artemis missions to the moon starting with Artemis 5. That mission is currently scheduled for 2029, three years after the projected date for Artemis’ first crewed lunar landing.

The teams’ leading companies may not yet be household names outside the space community: Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost and Venturi Astrolab. But each of those ventures has more established companies as their teammates.

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