Tag: Moon

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Open Lunar Foundation unveils moon village plan

Moon base
As shown in this artist’s conception, the European Space Agency is already laying plans for a “Moon Village” on the lunar surface, complete with 3-D-printed habitats. (ESA / RegoLight / Liquifer Systems Group)

After spending five years in semi-stealth mode, a San Francisco venture called the Open Lunar Foundation is talking about its plan to create a settlement on the moon at a cost in the range of $5 billion.

“At $5B, it’s not only achievable within current NASA budgets, it offers the tantalizing possibility that a single passionate individual could fund the entire program as their legacy!” Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson said today in a tweet.

Details about the campaign came to light in a Bloomberg News report, which said Jurvetson provided the nonprofit foundation’s initial funding. Open Lunar currently has a “war chest” of about $5 million, with aspirations of raising more funding for hardware as well as policy initiatives, Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance reported.

The idea of having a nonprofit group lead the charge for a moon settlement, as opposed to a government program, may sound a bit airy-fairy — particularly since it’s not coming directly from the likes of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk or Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, founder of the Blue Origin space venture.

But this is not just any run-of-the-mill nonprofit group.

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Space Council highlights moon, Mars … and nukes

Vice President Mike Pence delivers opening remarks during the sixth meeting of the National Space Council at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va. The space shuttle Discovery towers over him. (NASA Photo / Aubrey Gemignani)

The latest meeting of the National Space Council provided a forum to build support for NASA’s twin-focus plan to send astronauts to the Moon in preparation for trips to Mars – and for the idea of using nuclear-powered rockets to get there.

In contrast to some of the council’s past meetings, today’s session at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia produced no Space Policy Directives with capital letters. Instead, administration officials – led by Vice President Mike Pence – summarily approved a set of recommendations aimed at fostering cooperation with commercial ventures and international partners on NASA’s moon-to-Mars initiative.

Pence said the recommendations give NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine a 60-day timeline for “designation of an office and submission of a plan for sustainable lunar surface exploration and the development of crewed missions to Mars.”

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Vulcan rocket chosen for 2021 moon launch

Vulcan rocket illustration
An artist’s conception shows United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket lifting off. (ULA Illustration)

United Launch Alliance’s next-generation Vulcan rocket – and Blue Origin’s next-generation BE-4 rocket engine – have been chosen to send Astrobotic’s Peregrine moon lander as well as Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Dream Chaser mini-shuttle to the final frontier in 2021.

Neither of the past week’s announcements is all that surprising, because Astrobotic and SNC both had previous agreements to use ULA’s current-generation Atlas 5 rocket. But both announcements underscore the importance of holding to the current schedule for rolling out the BE-4 as well as the Vulcan, which is designed to use two BE-4 engines on its first-stage booster.

Blue Origin, the privately held space venture founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is thought to be in the final stages of testing the BE-4’s performance – not only for ULA’s Vulcan but also for its own orbital-class New Glenn rocket, which is also due for its maiden flight in 2021.

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NASA’s moon lander plan stirs up a fuss

Alabama ceremony
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is dwarfed by a 149-foot-tall liquid hydrogen structural test article for the heavy-lift Space Launch System as he announces Marshall Space Flight Center’s leadership role in developing the human landing system for Artemis moon missions. (NASA Photo)

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced today that Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama will take the lead role in developing the vehicles for landing astronauts on the moon – which could be good news for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, but definitely came as bad news for Texas lawmakers.

To be fair, Texas is getting a piece of the action in NASA’s Artemis moon program as well: NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will continue to take the lead role in human spaceflight – and in the development of the ascent module for the human landing system.

The latest step in NASA’s Artemis plan for sending astronauts to the moon within five years came during a ceremony at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., staged in front of a 149-foot-tall structural test model for NASA’s heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket.

Bridenstine said the moon lander program would bring 140 jobs to Marshall and 87 jobs to Johnson, with another 136 distributed among other NASA centers. “We focus on a ‘One NASA’ integrated approach that uses the technical capabilities of many centers,” he said.

Despite Bridenstine’s reassurances, Texan members of Congress said they were disappointed by the decision, and complained that NASA officials hadn’t told them about Alabama’s elevated role until reports started appearing in news outlets such as Ars Technica.

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Blue Origin partners with NASA on moon lander tech

Jeff Bezos and Blue Moon lander mockup
Jeff Bezos shows off a mockup of the Blue Moon lunar lander in May. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space venture, Blue Origin, has been selected to participate in three partnerships with NASA to advance technologies that could come into play for Artemis missions to the moon — and eventually for Mars missions as well.

The three projects were included in a newly released list of 19 public-private partnerships that have been forged with a dozen companies under the terms of an Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity, or ACO.

NASA issued the announcement last October. The arrangement doesn’t involve the transfer of funds, but rather the sharing of expertise, facilities, hardware and software for technologies that could be the focus of future contracts.

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First Mode looks ahead to moon missions

First Mode's Chris Voorhees
First Mode’s president and chief engineer, Chris Voorhees, shows off the employee-owned company’s digs near Seattle’s Pike Place Market. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

One year after engineers from the Planetary Resources asteroid mining company peeled off to form their own employee-owned startup, known as First Mode, they can point to the profitable work they’ve done on space missions that are heading for Mars and, yes, an asteroid.

But now they’re widening their focus to take in projects that are closer to home — including mining operations back here on Earth, and NASA’s Artemis effort to send astronauts to the moon’s surface by 2024.

“We’re growing our own infrastructure here,” Chris Voorhees, the company’s president and chief engineer, told GeekWire during a tour of First Mode’s office space in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood, not far from Pike Place Market.

So far, First Mode has made a name for itself as a design and engineering consultancy, but now it’s putting the infrastructure in place to build hardware as well. Its in-house clean room bears testament to that ambition.

“We really like the idea of flight hardware getting delivered out of Pike Place Market,” Voorhees said. “We think that’s pretty cool.”

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Boeing-built moon buggies win landmark status

Astronaut John Young and lunar rover
Apollo 16 astronaut John Young collects samples near the mission’s lunar rover in 1972. (NASA Photo)

King County now has three landmarks that are out of this world. Literally.

Tonight, the King County Landmarks Commission unanimously approved historic landmark designation for the Boeing-built rovers that were left behind on the moon by the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions nearly a half-century ago.

The landmark decision, delivered during a meeting in Kent, Wash., came in response to a request from Kent city officials and the Kent Downtown Partnership. Why Kent? That’s where the Boeing assembled and tested the lunar rovers.

“Above all, the designation for the City of Kent acts as a reminder of the dedicated engineers who changed history through the creation of the Lunar Roving Vehicles 50 years ago,” Kent Mayor Dana Ralph said in a statement. “The momentous recognition for Kent Valley allows for continued education and remembrance of the tangible impact these vehicles have had on space exploration indefinitely.”

The next step will be to win landmark recognition from Washington state and get the rovers added to the Washington Heritage Register.

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Northrop Grumman to build moon-orbiting habitat

Cygnus-derived habitation module
An artist’s conception shows Northrop Grumman’s habitation module, which is based on the design of the Cygnus cargo spacecraft. (Northrop Grumman Illustration)

NASA says it’s choosing Northrop Grumman to build the habitation module for its future moon-orbiting Gateway outpost, because it’s the only company that can do the job in time for a 2024 lunar landing.

In a procurement document released last week, the space agency said the other companies that were competing to build the Minimal Habitation Module as part of NASA’s NextSTEP program — Bigelow Aerospace, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, NanoRacks and Sierra Nevada Corp. — couldn’t have their hardware ready in time to meet the deadline set by the Trump administration.

“NGIS [Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, formerly Orbital ATK] was the only NextSTEP-2 contractor with a module design and the production and tooling resources capable of meeting the 2024 deadline,” NASA said.

For that reason, NASA is going with a sole-source process to award the contract for the habitation module, short-circuiting the full and open NextSTEP-2 Appendix A competition. As long as Northrop Grumman submits an acceptable proposal with a price tag that’s “fair and reasonable,” NASA will give its go-ahead.

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India sends probe toward moon landing

India GSLV rocket launch
India’s GSLV Mk III rocket lifts off, sending the Chandrayaan 2 probe on a trip to the moon. (ISRO Photo)

India began a slow but steady space odyssey to the moon’s south polar region today with the launch of its Chandrayaan 2 mission.

The lunar landing, set for Sept. 6-7, would make India the fourth nation to set a probe safely down on the moon’s surface, after Russia, the United States and China.

If all goes according to plan, the mission’s Vikram lander and Pragyan rover would gather the first on-the-ground scientific data from a region that NASA is targeting for a crewed landing in 2024.

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Blue Origin pushes ahead with moon lander engine

BE-7 engine test
Blue Origin’s BE-7 rocket engine executes a test firing in June. The green flame is produced by the engine’s ignition system. (Blue Origin Photo)

RENTON, Wash. — Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it has test-fired its BE-7 rocket engine for the total six-minute duration it would need for a landing on the moon.

Patrick Zeitouni, Blue Origin’s head of advanced development programs, said the milestone for cumulative firing time was reached during a test conducted just a few days ago at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama — part of a series of tests that began a month ago.

“We’re very excited,” Zeitouni said here at the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace conference. “That means we’re getting a whole lot closer to getting that engine fielded,” he said. “And as you guys know, propulsion, rocket engines are extremely important. They’re the long pole in the tent when you’re trying to develop a new system and bring it online.”

A single hydrogen-fueled BE-7 engine would power Blue Origin’s Blue Moon landerfor payload deliveries to the lunar surface, packing up to 10,000 pounds of thrust.

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