After SpaceX, Blue Origin will take astronauts to the Moon – 05/19/2023 – Science

Two years after signing a first contract with SpaceX, NASA announced, this Friday (19), that it chose the American space company Blue Origin to build a second moon landing system, destined to transport astronauts to the surface of the Moon.

The lunar landing module was selected by the US space agency for the Artemis 5 mission, scheduled for 2029. Before that, it will have to prove its safety by landing on the Moon without a crew.

This Friday, billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, tweeted that it was “an honor to be part of this journey with NASA”.

The contract was estimated at US$ 3.4 billion (almost R$ 17 billion), but John Couluris, vice president of lunar transport at Blue Origin, said, at a press conference, that the company would contribute “far beyond” that amount to develop the ship.

Artemis is the US space agency’s Return to the Moon program, which consists of several missions of increasing difficulty.

It started with the Artemis 1 mission, which sent a spacecraft around the Moon in November 2022, without a crew.

The Artemis 2 mission will send four astronauts around the Moon in the second half of 2024, but without reaching the moon. Recently, the identity of the chosen ones was revealed, three Americans and one Canadian.

Artemis 3 will then be the first mission that will place astronauts on the lunar surface since 1972. It is officially scheduled for the end of 2025, a schedule that, by all indications, will not be fulfilled.

The next two missions, Artemis 4 (2028) and Artemis 5 (2029), will also land on the Moon, however they will first pass by a new space station in lunar orbit, Gateway, which does not yet exist.

Competition

In 2021, NASA chose SpaceX to build the Artemis 3 lander. The contract was valued at US$ 2.9 billion (approximately R$ 15 billion, in current values), but SpaceX contributes funds that go beyond of that amount.

Blue Origin, which was also competing for that first contract, sued NASA, accusing the agency of having chosen a single company for this mission, and not two, as it had initially intended, a common practice for there to be a plan B in case of failure. Finally, the case was archived.

In 2022, SpaceX was chosen by NASA again, this time to be responsible for the landing module of the Artemis 4 mission. At the same time, the American agency invited other companies to participate in the bid for the rest of the program.

“We want more competition. We want two moon landing modules,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on Friday. “Thus, there is more reliability and an alternative support.”

Blue Origin’s lander, called Blue Moon, will be 16 meters high and weigh 45 tons when filled with fuel (liquid hydrogen and oxygen).

Several companies are partners in the project: Boeing, Draper, Astrobotic, Honeybee Robotics and Lockheed Martin.

The latter will be responsible for developing a crucial element of the mission. Once in lunar orbit, Blue Moon will need to be refueled before it can descend and pick up astronauts from the surface of the Moon.

Lockheed Martin must develop a kind of transporter, capable of refueling Blue Moon around the Moon.

Blue Origin plans to use its New Glenn rocket, which has never flown before, to launch both the lander and this transporter.

Prelude to Mars

Astronauts will travel aboard the Orion capsule, propelled to the Moon thanks to NASA’s new SLS megarocket.

These two elements were tested empty during Artemis 1 and will be tested with a crew on Artemis 2.

On Artemis 3, the Orion capsule will dock directly with SpaceX’s lander. Two astronauts will then descend to the Moon for approximately a week (another two will remain aboard Orion).

Once they finish their experiments, the two astronauts will return in the lander to Orion, which will bring the four crew members back to Earth.

Later, Orion will connect to the Gateway space station and astronauts will cross it before boarding the SpaceX lander (Artemis 4), or Blue Origin (Artemis 5).

All of these missions are aimed at the south pole of the Moon, where water ice has been detected.

SpaceX’s lander will be a modified version of its Starship spacecraft, which is currently under development in Texas. In April, the model exploded in flight during a first major test.

The objective of the Artemis program is to learn to live on the Moon in order to test all the necessary technologies for an even more risky destination: Mars.