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posted by martyb on Saturday June 01 2019, @09:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the One-of-these-days,-Alice...To-the-Moon! dept.

NASA awards contracts to three companies to land payloads on the moon

NASA announced May 31 the award of more than $250 million in contracts to three companies to deliver NASA payloads to the lunar surface by 2021.

The agency said it awarded contracts to Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and OrbitBeyond to carry up to 23 payloads to the moon on three commercial lunar lander missions scheduled for launch between September 2020 and July 2021. The three companies were selected for these task orders from the nine companies that received Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) awards in November 2018.

[...] OrbitBeyond is the first of the three scheduled to fly, with the company currently planning to launch its Z-01 lander on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in Septmber 2020. The New Jersey-based company, which has ties to India's TeamIndus, a former Google Lunar X Prize team, received $97 million from NASA to fly up to four payloads on a lander scheduled to touch down on Mare Imbrium.

Astrobotic plans to launch its Peregrine lander in June 2021, landing in July. The company had previously announced plans to fly the payload as a secondary payload on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5, but John Thornton, chief executive of Astrobotic, said on the NASA webcast that the company was "assessing our launch options and making a decision very shortly." The company received $79.5 million for carrying up to 14 payloads to the crater Lacus Mortis.

Intuitive Machines plan to launch its Nova-C lander on a Falcon 9 in July 2021, landing on the moon six and a half days later. The Houston-based company received $77 million to carry up to four payloads on its lander, which will touch down on Oceanus Procellarum or Mare Serenitatis.

Also at NYT and The Verge.

Previously: NASA Opens the Floodgates for Firms With Planetary Ambitions


Original Submission

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NASA Opens the Floodgates for Firms With Planetary Ambitions 1 comment

Submitted via IRC for takyon

NASA opens the floodgates for firms with planetary ambitions - SpaceNews.com

This article originally appeared in the Dec. 17, 2018 issue of SpaceNews magazine.

When NASA revealed the names of nine companies eligible for contracts to deliver payloads to the moon on robotic landers, it set off a flurry of activity among firms with related technology.

"Going back to the moon with commercial technology opens the floodgates," said Grant Anderson, president, chief executive and co-founder of Paragon Space Development Corp., a thermal control technology specialist and Moon Express teammate for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

NASA's recent moon missions have been few and far between, Anderson said. Companies competed for roles in a multibillion-dollar lunar exploration campaigns and if not chosen waited many years for another opportunity. Instead, CLPS offers firms a chance to bid for firm fixed-price task orders worth as much as $2.6 billion over a decade. Tasks include integration of NASA payloads onto commercial vehicles, transportation of payloads to the moon, delivery of scientific data obtained by commercial instruments and return of lunar samples to Earth.

In late November, NASA selected nine companies to participate in CLPS: Astrobotic Technology, Deep Space Systems, Draper, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Lockheed Martin, Masten Space Systems, Moon Express and Orbit Beyond. Each of those firms is forming partnerships with additional companies, including many pairings not yet announced.

"All of the sudden there are opportunities for anyone," said Kris Zacny, vice president and director for Honeybee Robotics Exploration Technology Group, which develops scientific instruments and in-situ resource utilization technology.

"CLPS has the potential to be a great program," said Michael Sims, Ceres Robotics Inc. founder and chief executive, who established the Montara, California, company in 2017 after spending 21 years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We go from a couple of companies in the U.S. to nine companies viable to do work on the moon."


Original Submission

Astrobotic Will Send a Lander to the Lunar South Pole Using Falcon Heavy 8 comments

Astrobotic selects Falcon Heavy to launch NASA's VIPER lunar rover

Astrobotic has signed a contract with SpaceX for the launch of its Griffin lunar lander, carrying a NASA lunar rover, on a Falcon Heavy in 2023.

Astrobotic announced April 13 that it selected SpaceX's Falcon Heavy for its Griffin Mission 1 lunar lander mission, which will deliver the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) spacecraft to the south pole of the moon in late 2023. Astrobotic won a NASA competition through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program last year to transport VIPER on its Griffin lunar lander.

[...] VIPER is a NASA mission to investigate permanently shadowed regions of craters at the lunar south pole that may contain deposits of water ice that could serve as resources for future crewed missions. It is designed to operate for 100 days after landing.

NASA originally planned to launch VIPER in 2022, with a mission cost of $250 million. However, NASA postponed the launch to late 2023 to provide more time for work to increase VIPER's mission life from 14 to 100 days. That, in turn, drove up the cost of VIPER to $433.5 million, NASA disclosed in March.

Previously: Astrobotic to Use "CubeRover" to Explore the Moon
NASA Selects Three Companies to Land Science Payloads on the Moon
MoonRanger Robotic Rover Will Seek out Water on the Moon


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday June 01 2019, @10:45PM (1 child)

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 01 2019, @10:45PM (#850316) Journal

    The Peregrine has a diameter of 2.5 meters, so it will fit in a Falcon 9 fairing.

    That said, I hope they do choose to stay with the Atlas V. Competition in launch providers is a good thing. They probably won't given the enormous cost difference between the two platforms, but one can hope.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday June 01 2019, @11:21PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday June 01 2019, @11:21PM (#850325) Journal

      Secondary payload is probably cheaper than dedicated Falcon 9 in most cases.

      However, on the idea of competition, propping up ULA is unnecessary. For commercial customers, SpaceX already has to compete with launchers around the world. U.S. government and NASA have loopholes that allow them to use a foreign launch vehicle like Ariane if they need to. For example, JWST will be launched on an Ariane 5 (see Space News article below).

      SpaceX is going to be driving its own costs down to make travel to Mars a reality. This includes BFRs that are potentially cheaper than Falcon 9 to make [teslarati.com], and definitely cheaper than Falcon 9 to launch (maybe cheaper than Falcon 1 [nextbigfuture.com] and some smallsat launchers). Mars plan includes hundreds of BFRs, which should streamline costs. Point-to-point BFR airliner transport would also help that. In the latest plan [teslarati.com], they would forgo the booster stage and just make suborbital hops without it.

      It's possible that SpaceX could drop prices and get an "unfair" monopoly on U.S. government and national security launches and then drive those prices back up, but Blue Origin will be competing along with others. Again, even Ariane is a potential option [spacenews.com] here. Otherwise, SpaceX could maintain a huge margin on BFR launches since nobody else would come close to their affordability. This would allow them to recoup development costs and prevent them from severely undercutting competitors. We'll have to see how it goes. No matter how good BFR is, China, India, Russia, Europe, and others will eventually create their own fully reusable launchers that are affordable enough to be propped up by governments and remain within an order of magnitude of SpaceX's price or $/kg.

      If Starlink becomes the majority of SpaceX's revenue, I don't see them price gouging the U.S. government on BFRs that will be far cheaper to launch than their already cheap Falcon family.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 01 2019, @11:30PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 01 2019, @11:30PM (#850329)

    Why pay a bunch if bureaucrats if they're just subcontracting everything out?

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday June 02 2019, @12:41AM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday June 02 2019, @12:41AM (#850348) Journal

      A business isn't going to send out science instruments for fun.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 1) by east coast on Sunday June 02 2019, @01:07PM

        by east coast (1625) on Sunday June 02 2019, @01:07PM (#850555)

        I think more the point is that doing it in-house should be more cost efficient. If nothing, it does away with the middle man.

        But there is a slight move by private firms to do their own research here. I guess giving them a payoff as a way to see their research come to some fruition will help spur this along. At least I hope.

        --
        Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 5423 BC.
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