NASA’s Artemis program

Tag: NASA’s Artemis program

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Moves Closer To Suborbital Passenger Flights

April 28, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article from CBS News April 14, 2021 (wsgw.com)

• On April 14th, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin took another step toward sending passengers into space with the launch of the fifteenth unpiloted New Shepard rocket in six years carrying an unmanned capsule on a suborbital test flight. Using live ‘astronaut stand-ins’ before takeoff and after landing to rehearse boarding and egress procedures, launch commentator Ariane Cornell said, “We’re getting very close to sending people up to space and back.” The stand-ins tested their communications gear and reviewed launch procedures before exiting to clear the pad for flight.

• Wednesday’s flight began at 12:51 p.m. ET when the New Shepard rocket’s hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine launched from the pad at Blue Origin’s remote Van Horn, Texas, flight test facility. The stubby rocket quickly climbed away from Launch Site One, steadily accelerating to reach a maximum velocity of 2,247 mph before releasing the empty crew capsule about two minutes and 40 seconds after liftoff. The capsule then soared to an altitude of 66 miles, well above the 50-mile-high lower “boundary” of space, before beginning the long plunge back to Earth.

• The New Shepard booster homed in on its landing pad, restarting its engine and deploying four short landing legs before settling to an on-target touchdown. Inside the separated capsule, an instrumented test dummy dubbed ‘Mannequin Skywalker’ experienced three to five minutes of microgravity before atmospheric deceleration forces set in. The capsule floated to a relatively gentle landing a short distance away, slowed by three large parachutes.

• The New Shepard system is designed to carry space tourists, government and civilian researchers and a variety of payloads to altitudes just above the discernible atmosphere. Blue Origin has not yet announced when it plans its first launch with passengers on board or how much tickets might cost. But the New Shepard capsule will afford six passengers at a time several minutes of weightlessness and an out-of-this-world view through six large windows.

• NASA, the Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration consider 50 miles to be the dividing line between space and the discernible atmosphere, while the international Fédération Aéronautique Internationale puts the threshold at 100 kilometers, or 62 miles. The New Shepard capsule routinely exceeds both of those standards.

• New Shepard is a strictly suborbital rocket and spacecraft that is not capable of achieving the velocities required to reach orbit. It will compete with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceplane for commercial passengers and payloads. However, Blue Origin is developing orbit-class New Glenn rockets that will use a powerful new company-designed engine to help boost large satellites into orbit. The company has built a huge rocket factory just outside the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to manufacture the rockets and is developing a launch complex at the nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

• The company also is leading a team, one of three, designing a moon lander to carry astronauts to and from the lunar surface in NASA’s Artemis program. NASA is expected to award contracts to one or possibly two teams over the next few weeks.

**New Shepard rocket returning to landing pad**

Taking another step toward sending passengers into space, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin

launched an unpiloted New Shepard capsule on a suborbital test flight Wednesday, using astronaut stand-ins before takeoff and after landing to rehearse boarding and egress procedures.

The company has not yet announced when it plans its first launch with passengers on board or how much tickets might cost. But after 15 unpiloted test flights, the system appears to be on the verge of commercial operations, giving six passengers at a time a few minutes of weightlessness and an out-of-this-world view.

“We’re getting very close to sending people up to space and back,” said launch

commentator Ariane Cornell.

To help pave the way, company personnel walked up the launch gantry before liftoff and strapped in aboard the New Shepard capsule just as paying customers will do for an actual flight. The stand-ins tested their communications gear and reviewed launch procedures before exiting to clear the pad for flight.

Wednesday’s flight began at 12:51 p.m. ET when the New Shepard rocket’s hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine ignited with a rush of flaming exhaust at Blue Origin’s remote Van Horn, Texas, flight test facility.

The stubby rocket quickly climbed away from Launch Site One, steadily accelerating as it consumed propellants and lost weight, reaching a maximum velocity of 2,247 mph before releasing the crew capsule about two minutes and 40 seconds after liftoff.

The capsule then soared to an altitude of 66 miles (348,753 feet), well above the 50-mile-high lower “boundary” of space, before beginning the long plunge back to Earth. Inside, an instrumented test dummy — Mannequin Skywalker — experienced three to five minutes of microgravity before atmospheric deceleration forces set in.

The New Shepard booster, meanwhile, homed in on its landing pad, restarting its engine and deploying four short landing legs before settling to an on-target touchdown. The capsule floated to a relatively gentle landing a short distance away, slowed as usual by three large parachutes.

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US Military Sees Great Power Competition for Lunar Resources

August 30, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Sandra Erwin August 20, 2020 (aerospace.csis.org)

• What nations do in space will frame any future international space law, says General Steven Butow, director of the space portfolio at the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), a DoD organization in Silicon Valley that works with private commercial vendors developing technologies relevant to national security. Said Butow, “One of the things we don’t want is to let our competitors and adversaries go out and establish the precedent of how things are going to be done in the solar system, starting with the Moon.”

• The Pentagon is concerned about the possibility that China will establish a presence on the Moon and will try to set the international rules of behavior in space. The issue was raised in a “State of the Space Industrial Base Report 2020” published last month by DIU, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and the U.S. Space Force. “As space activities expand beyond geosynchronous orbit, the first nation to establish transportation infrastructure and logistics capabilities serving GEO and cislunar space will have superior ability to exercise control of cislunar space and in particular the Lagrange points and the resources of the Moon,” the report said.

• Control of lunar resources such as hydrogen and oxygen for propellant will be key to “enable overall space commercial development.” And “China has a grand strategy for this,” said Butow. China’s space strategy integrates government, industry and academia. So in order to compete, the United States has to figure out how to marshal the resources of the private sector in a free market economy. The DIU intends to leveraging public private partnerships to our strategic advantage.

• Cislunar space development is likely to be a “hybrid” effort funded both by government and industry. DIU has funded about $200 million worth of space projects with commercial companies that resulted in an additional $2.5 billion in private investment poured into those projects. “We can leverage a lot of that private investment without putting a burden on programs of record which can only be done by the government,” said Butow.

• Brent Sherwood of the private aerospace manufacturer Blue Origin, cautioned that the US government will need to be a stable customer to anchor private businesses contributing to industry in space and on the Moon. But as yet, no one has yet come up with a product that could be generated on the Moon that would add enough value into the terrestrial economy to get private investors to bankroll lunar operations, Sherwood said. NASA selected Blue Origin’s “national team”, which includes Draper, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, to receive a $579 million NASA contract to design vehicles to land humans on the Moon in 2024 under NASA’s Artemis program.

• “We need government to explore and develop the fundamentals,” said Sherwood. “Then we can determine what are the commercial drivers that would cause investment in growth.” “[A]t the beginning there are too many unknowns.” But NASA, other government agencies and the private sector will have to start developing the logistics infrastructure to reach cislunar space and establish a human presence there. Lots of new technologies, such as communications and navigation systems, will be needed to operate there.

• The DIU-led report says US participation in a cislunar economy “will require security and a stabilizing military presence.” The responsibility will fall on the US Space Force to provide “surveillance, aids to navigation, and help when required.”

WASHINGTON — The competition for the moon between the Unites States and China is being closely watched by the Defense Department as the military expects to play a role protecting U.S. access to cislunar space.

One concern for the Pentagon is the possibility that China establishes a presence on the moon before the United States and tries to set the international rules of behavior in space, said Brig. Gen. Steven Butow, director of the space portfolio at the Defense Innovation Unit.

DIU is a Defense Department organization based in Silicon Valley that works with commercial vendors developing technologies relevant to national security.

“Competition is a good thing, but hopefully there’ll be opportunities for cooperative uses of space,” Butow said on Wednesday at the Ascend virtual conference hosted by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Laws are set by precedent, said Butow. What nations do in space will frame any future international space law, he added. “One of the things we don’t want is to let our competitors and adversaries go out and establish the precedent of how things are going to be done in the solar system, starting with the moon.”

The issue was raised in a “state of the space industrial base” report published last month by DIU, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the U.S. Space Force.

“As space activities expand beyond geosynchronous orbit, the first nation to establish transportation infrastructure and logistics capabilities serving GEO and cislunar space will have superior ability to exercise control of cislunar space and in particular the Lagrange points and the resources of the moon,” the report said.

Control of lunar resources such as hydrogen and oxygen for propellant, the report said, will be key to “enable overall space commercial development.”
“China has a grand strategy for this,” said Butow.

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