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NASA Awards Contract to Launch Initial Elements for Lunar Outpost
NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the agency's Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) and Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), the foundational elements of the Gateway. As the first long-term orbiting outpost around the Moon, the Gateway is critical to supporting sustainable astronauts missions under the agency's Artemis program.
After integration on Earth, the PPE and HALO are targeted to launch together no earlier than May 2024 on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The total cost to NASA is approximately $331.8 million, including the launch service and other mission-related costs.
The PPE is a 60-kilowatt class solar electric propulsion spacecraft that also will provide power, high-speed communications, attitude control, and the capability to move the Gateway to different lunar orbits, providing more access to the Moon's surface than ever before.
The HALO is the pressurized living quarters where astronauts who visit the Gateway, often on their way to the Moon, will work. It will provide command and control and serve as the docking hub for the outpost. HALO will support science investigations, distribute power, provide communications for visiting vehicles and lunar surface expeditions, and supplement the life support systems aboard Orion, NASA's spacecraft that will deliver Artemis astronauts to the Gateway.
The Falcon Heavy will use an extended payload fairing.
Also at Spaceflight Now, TechCrunch, Teslarati, and Wccftech.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 11 2021, @07:07PM (1 child)
The choice does not need to be mutually exclusive.
Boeing has lost their way now that McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing, using Boeing's money. Then McDonnell Douglas managers took over. Moved the company headquarters away from engineering an closer to Wall Street. Because that's what is most important! Then the company became less and less about doing engineering.
Blue Origin should focus on trying to do something fast. Just because you have lots of resources doesn't mean you should just poke along. If anything, it means you should be doing even more even faster. Or more concurrently. Blowing up even more things, not fewer. Blue Origin hasn't yet even gotten something into orbit and they've been around longer than SpaceX.
But what about ULA?
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 12 2021, @04:16AM
ULA was Boeing's (failed) attempt to kill the commercial launch program. They are still seething that SpaceX was allowed to bid for ISS cargo launches and this is just another item on the list.