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Artemis

NASA Has Some Moon Lander News For You (Update)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 23, 2022
Filed under ,
NASA Has Some Moon Lander News For You (Update)

NASA Provides Update to Astronaut Moon Lander Plans Under Artemis, NASA
“To bring a second entrant to market for the development of a lunar lander in parallel with SpaceX, NASA will issue a draft solicitation in the coming weeks. This upcoming activity will lay out requirements for a future development and demonstration lunar landing capability to take astronauts between orbit and the surface of the Moon. This effort is meant to maximize NASA’s support for competition and provides redundancy in services to help ensure NASA’s ability to transport astronauts to the lunar surface. This upcoming second contract award, known as the Sustaining Lunar Development contract, combined with the second option under SpaceX’s original landing award, will pave the way to future recurring lunar transportation services for astronauts at the Moon.”
Keith’s update: Show me the money.
NASA Media Briefing On Artemis Strategy for Astronaut Moon Landers
“NASA will host a media teleconference at 3:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday, March 23, to provide an update on the agency’s goals to transport astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon under Artemis.”
Keith’s note: NASA PAO sent this out with 24 hours notice. You’d think that if this was really important and if NASA wanted the best possible exposure to the media that they’d give more advance notice – especially since all of the space media are already busy this week covering Satellite 2020 and/or Space Science Week at the National Academy. Maybe NASA PAO AA Marc Etkind is trying to distract people from the whole Ukraine/Russia/ISS thing with a contrived non-event. Or maybe this is about a possible second human lander proposal solicitation. If so then the obvious question will be “show me the money”. BTW whatever happened to that big budget windfall Bill Nelson said NASA was going to get? Then the media will ask when the Artemis III landing will actually happen and no one from NASA will give a clear answer (with a year etc.) And Bill Nelson will slowly read some lengthy text filled with happy words about the big rocket and whatever rocks his boat these days after the sugar high he got from the SLS rollout photo-op.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

15 responses to “NASA Has Some Moon Lander News For You (Update)”

  1. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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    they finally going to release the sustaining lander RFP so folks can start working on the 2027 lander for Artemis V?

  2. Keith Vauquelin says:
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    Bill Nelson:

    I know you drink the KoolAid, which is more evidence of the lunacy of SLS. You are the lunatic leading the charge.

    CONGRESS: Kill SLS NOW. It is a criminal waste of money.

  3. gbaikie says:
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    Maybe NASA has inside info on FAA report on Starship.
    But nah, why would NASA be involved??!

  4. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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    will be interesting to see how industry reacts to spacex getting a second lander demo flight while the rest of them have to compete for a demo. given how much some complained only picking one lander gave spacex an unfair advantage I can only imagine what new lawsuits/protests might come out of today’s change to the forward plan.

  5. Jonna31 says:
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    I really don’t care about this second lander. It’s pure pork to keep Congress happy because Starship is going to eat the lunch of their favored contractors.

    What i do want to know is precisely how many Starship tankers will be needed to refuel the Starship Human Landing system for it’s TLI burn. That kind of matters to this whole thing, because Starship will have to demonstrate that before it’s ready to go. There is a lot of things Starship will have to do for the HLS to work. 5 years or so to do it? It can be done, but every month counts and SpaceX really needs to crank out test vehicles over the next few years.

    Starship HLS was the right, bold and forward thinking choice by NASA. But it’s also asking a lot more than putting an Apollo-style lander in an SLS. Not that we should do that of course.

    • Terry Stetler says:
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      AIUI, four tankers and the depot. The depot gets filled, HLS takes a drink.

      • Jonna31 says:
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        If they can launch Starship as often and Falcon 9, that model will work splendidly. It’ll make the SLS the choke point for Lunar ops.

        Thing is though, it took, lets say about 8-9 years for the Falcon 9 to get to its current tempo.They’ll have to do something approximating that with Starship in about 4. That’s an unforgiving timeline.

        • Terry Stetler says:
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          I think the idea is to have a Congo line of tankers marching to the pad in turn for launch. Perhaps transport platforms on rails.

          • Zed_WEASEL says:
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            No need for a rail system. The self propelled modular transporters that SX is using more than adequate to move a road column of tankers.

            It will help if they can have multiple launch mounts at each launch site.

          • Christopher James Huff says:
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            The tower catch landing system as used for the Starships is designed for the tankers. Other Starships will have to be removed for payload integration (or at least moved aside and some kind of cargo module removed), the tankers just need to be restacked and flown again (provided there’s no damage to repair). If there’s tankers queued up, it’ll be in orbit, phasing to rendezvous with the depot or waiting for landing opportunities after doing their propellant transfers.

          • Zed_WEASEL says:
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            Nah. SpaceX will just build a batch of ridicules huge mobile structures to load and unload payloads to and from Starships sitting on self propelled modular transporters next to the launch mount.