MASS

 

Blog for Sunday, May 21, 2023

Fourth weekly blog, starting to become a habit, hope you enjoy. Any feedback is appreciated.

This week Carol and I went for our annual pilgrimage to Shady Hill Nursery, now Countryside Gardens, in Elburn, IL. We’ve been going there for quite a few years. Memories include sharing geranium prices with Silvio, picking up Meteor Shower plants because they look so cool and one-time event where we called the Mund’s when we stopped in at Wahlburger’s restaurant on the way home and surprise, surprise, they joined us for a burger!

Humans to Mars Summit for 2023 (H2M) -- I just finished watching the 27 hours of H2M on YouTube. Beth did a fabulous job as co-host with Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. She also moderated a few of the panel discussions. Very interesting seeing all the representatives from NASA and industry. I feel like I understand NASA’s new “Moon to Mars” strategy much better. One big question I have, is where was Robert Zubrin? He has always been so prominent at other Mars events.

My lead for today was going to be the Axiom 2 mission but then NASA announced the award for the second Human Landing System (HLS) on the moon. HLS leads the way.

Blue Moon Lander

NASA names second HLS team – On Friday, 5/19/23, NASA announced that the Blue Moon Lander from Blue Origin (BO) will be the second HLS lander. A little over 2 years ago NASA awarded SpaceX $2.9 billion for their Lunar Starship as the sole winner of the original HLS competition. Lunar Starship will take 2 astronauts down to the lunar surface as part of Artemis 3 in December of 2025. Blue Origin sued NASA over not being selected. NASA said that they could only afford one team. Subsequently, NASA awarded SpaceX another $1.15 billion for their upgraded “sustainable” version of the Lunar Starship to be used on Artemis 4. Congress said they wanted 2 landers, so there was one more contest. The winner, Blue Origin will get $3.4 billion for their “sustainable” lunar lander that will support the Artemis 5 landing in 2029. They will perform a test unmanned lunar landing in 2028. BO says they are funding over 50% of the effort on their part. The sustainable landers will be able to carry more cargo and up to a crew of 4 to the surface. Plus, they will integrate with the Lunar Gateway and support surface missions for up to 30 days. Hopefully, this isn’t a second choice like Starliner for Commercial Crew, where Boeing is twice as expensive as SpaceX and so late on delivery that the service is missing much of its “window of need”. BO left a bad taste in my mouth with their suit that delayed the startup of the HLS program. The Blue Moon Lander will support up to 20 mt of cargo to the lunar surface in its reusable mode and 30 mt in expendable mode. The 16m tall lander will weigh 16 mt dry and 45 mt loaded with LH2 and LOX. The CIS-lunar transporter/propellant loader is coming from Lockheed Martin. The lander has been redesigned so that the crew section is at the bottom and the fuel tanks are on the top. That removes one of the big criticisms of the original design where astronauts would have to navigate a 12m (40 ft) ladder to climb down to the lunar surface. BO will use the New Glenn rocket to get Blue Moon to lunar orbit. Dynetics was the only other bidder in the recent contest with their ALPACA lander. Not much was said of their bid except that it was more expensive than Blue Moon. I think I sense another MASS Prize contest where we will guess when the first HLS vehicle successfully lands on the moon.

Rayyanah Barnawi, John Shoffner, Peggy Whitson & Ali AlQarni

Axiom 2 mission – Launched on Sunday, May 21, to the ISS with 4 astronauts including Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut that holds the US record for cumulative days in space, John Shoffner, a private astronaut on his first flight, and Ali AlQarni and Rayyanah Barnawi, two Saudi Arabian astronauts, one male and one female. They will dock to the ISS and spend 8 days performing 14 science experiments and doing social outreach. They will be joined by the ISS crew of 7 including 3 Americans and 3 Russians plus 1 United Arab Emirates astronaut. The mission has been reduced by 2 days due to the conflict on the 2 ISS docking ports for Commercial vehicles. Boeing is to perform their CFT mission with the first manned Starliner capsule in July and SpaceX wants to send their CRS-28 supply capsule with new ISS solar arrays soon. NASA says they want to send 2 private missions to the ISS each year. Axiom is definitely a company with space involvement because they are developing spacesuits for NASA as well as sending a module in 2025 to dock with ISS to build out their own commercial space-station. SpaceX will return the Falcon 9 booster from the launch back to the Kennedy Space Center.

SpaceX hires retired Kathy Lueders from NASA -- Lueders was the head of NASA’s Human Spaceflight division. She follows the former head of the division to SpaceX, Bill Gerstenmaier, who is the VP of Build and Flight Reliability at SpaceX. Ken Bowersox, who is also a former astronaut and worked for SpaceX before returning to NASA, is the current head of Manned Spaceflight. This relationship can’t help but solidify the attachment that NASA has to the SpaceX Lunar Starship for HLS.