Traveling to the Moon is hard, and sending
crewed spacecraft to other planets will be
even harder.
One of the major challenges in deep space
travel is the question of power, since, at
present, spacecraft have to take all their
required fuel with them when they leave Earth.
NASA wants to change that.
As NASA forges ahead to the Moon — and eventually
to Mars — the agency is counting on private
industry to help advance the exploration frontier.
On Tuesday, July 30, NASA announced new partnerships
with various aerospace organizations, aimed
at advancing technologies which could be critical
for future missions.
The agency is partnering with more than a
dozen U.S. companies, including SpaceX and
Blue Origin and more, on 19 different technology-development
projects.
This round of Space Act Agreements (SAAs)
shows a heavy focus on technologies and concepts
that could benefit exploration of the Moon
and deep space more generally, including lunar
landers, food production, reusable rockets,
and more.
In October, NASA put out a call for proposals
from the industry, asking them to detail different
technologies they’d like to develop through
the program.
Now, the companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin
that have been selected will work with various
NASA centers, which will provide their facilities,
expertise, hardware and software.
The main goals of the partnerships involve
further spurring the commercial space sector
and helping to mature technologies that could
benefit NASA and the nation down the road.
"NASA's proven experience and unique facilities
are helping commercial companies mature their
technologies at a competitive pace," Jim Reuter,
associate administrator of NASA's Space Technology
Mission Directorate, said in a statement.
"We've identified technology areas NASA needs
for future missions, and these public-private
partnerships will accelerate their development
so we can implement them faster."
In this Video Engineering Today analyzes why
NASA partners with SpaceX & Blue Origin for
future Moon technology?
Let’s get into details.
One of the big winners of the initiative is
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which has three
development partnerships with NASA through
the program.
The company recently unveiled a lander concept
called Blue Moon to take humans to the lunar
surface.
Now, Blue Origin will work with NASA's Langley
Research Center in Virginia and Marshall Space
Flight Center in Alabama to develop and evaluate
materials for possible use on lunar landers'
rocket-engine nozzles.
The company will also partner with Johnson
Space Center in Houston and Goddard Space
Flight Center in Maryland on two separate
projects.
One project will develop navigation and guidance
system for precise moon landings, and the
other aims to develop a new power system that
could help keep its Blue Moon lander up and
running during the Moon’s nighttime — a
two-week period of total darkness during which
temperatures can plunge to -280 degrees Fahrenheit
(-173 degrees Celsius).
Meanwhile, SpaceX is also working with NASA
through the Announcement of Collaborative
Opportunity program to develop technologies
that will be vital for the company’s future
Starship rocket.
Put simply, all 19 awards are great and will
hopefully result in tangible products and
benefits, but Elon Musk’s SpaceX has a track
record of achievement on the cutting edge
of aerospace that simply has not been touched
over the last decade.
As such, the company’s two Space Act Agreements
are some of the most interesting and telling,
both ultimately focused on enabling SpaceX
Starship launches to and landings on the Moon
and any number of other destinations in the
solar system.
Perhaps most importantly, it signals a small
but growing sect within NASA that is willing
and eager to acknowledge Starship’s existence
and actively work with SpaceX to both bring
it to life and further spaceflight technology
in general.
One agreement focuses specifically on “vertically
landing large rockets on the Moon”.
Elon Musk's company SpaceX will work with
NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on
how best to land Starship on the moon.
While the other more generally seeks to “advance
technology needed to transfer propellant in
orbit”.
SpaceX will also work with the Marshall Center
and Glenn Research Center in Cleveland on
ways to transfer propellant in orbit, tech
that could aid the development of SpaceX's
Mars-colonizing Starship vehicle.
In this particular round of Space Act Agreements,
they will be “non-reimbursable” – bureaucratic-speak
for a collaboration where both sides pay their
own way and no money is exchanged.
According a SpaceX spokesperson, "We believe
SpaceX's fleet of advanced rockets and spacecraft,
including Falcon Heavy and Starship, are integral
to accelerating NASA's lunar and Mars plans"
The future SpaceX Starship rocket is currently
being developed at SpaceX to take cargo and
humans to deep space destinations.
Now, SpaceX will be getting help from the
agency to figure out how to land large rockets
like Starship on the surface of the Moon,
and the company will also study how much lunar
dust these landings kick up.
The “large rocket” – on the Moon and
attempting to understand just how the Moon’s
powdery regolith will respond when subjected
to the plume of a Raptor engine.
Put simply, the task of landing a spacecraft
as massive as Starship has never been attempted
on the Moon, and the process itself – irrespective
of any potential surprises from plume-regolith
interaction – poses some obvious challenges.
In the most basic sense, SpaceX Starship is
massive.
According to the 2018 dimensions, it will
stretch 55m (180 ft) from nose to tail, be
9m (30 ft) in diameter, and weigh 85 tons
(190,000 lb) empty and upwards of ~1350 tons
(2.95 million lbs) fully fueled.
For reference, that is almost 80% as tall
and more than 2.5 times as heavy as an entire
Falcon 9 rocket.
In the history of lunar exploration, Apollo’s
Lunar Module– including landing and ascent
stages – is the heaviest vehicle to have
ever landed on the Moon, weighing a maximum
of 5500 kg (12,100 lb) at landing.
As such, an expendable Starship landing on
the Moon with zero propellant for a possible
return to Earth would easily break the record
for landed mass by a factor of 10-20.
Aside from the mass of SpaceX Starship, there
is also the question of how to gently land
the spacecraft in the first place.
Lunar gravity is roughly 1/6th of Earth’s,
meaning that, say, Raptor’s thrust 200 tons
would equate to more than 1200 tons of effective
thrust on the Moon, a more than 10:1 thrust-to-weight
ratio.
For reference, the Apollo Lunar Module descent
stage was powered by an engine with ~10,000
lbf (4.5 tons) of thrust that could throttle
as low as ~1000 lbf (0.45 tons), meaning that
even in lunar gravity conditions, the Lunar
Modulecould have a thrust-to-weight ratio
less than 1.
For the purpose of safely landing on the Moon
and ensuring a gentle landing, that is an
extremely desirable thing to have.
Much like Falcon 9’s upper stage features
cold-gas nitrogen thrusters to settle its
propellant before MVac ignition, SpaceX Starship
will likely need a similar system.
Additionally, SpaceX is getting NASA help
to figure out how to transfer rocket propellants
in space, something that is absolute necessity
for Starship to simultaneously be fully reusable
and capable of landing significant payloads
on other planets or moons.
Ever since SpaceX CEO Elon Musk first revealed
the company’s Mars-bound launch vehicle
in 2016, it has incorporated in-orbit refueling
as a foundational feature.
The SpaceX Starship design calls for the vehicle
to get “filled up” with propellant while
in orbit around Earth, so that it has all
the fuel it needs to break free of our planet’s
gravity.
Developing ways to transfer propellant in
space could also be a game changer for other
companies beyond SpaceX.
For instance, many companies are hoping to
mine the Moon’s water and turn it into rocket
propellant that can be stored in so-called
“depots” in space.
That way, rockets could meet up with these
depots and refuel to travel farther distances.
But the only way this concept works is if
engineers can develop autonomous spacecraft
that can transfer super cold and sometimes
volatile propellants in space, something that’s
particularly difficult in an environment without
gravity.
NASA has been working on this technology,
and a few spacecraft have already demonstrated
this capability in space.
But the process is far from mature.
This is not to say that Starship will be useless
without refueling – according to SpaceX
VP of Sales Jonathan Hofeller, Starship will
be capable of launching more than 100 tons
(220,000 lb) to low Earth orbit and 20 tons
(44,000 lb) to geostationary transfer orbit
(GTO), more than enough to satisfy every commercial
demand currently in existence.
However, with one or several refueling missions,
SpaceX Starship should be able to turn 100
tons to LEO into 100 tons to the surface of
Mars or dozens of tons to the surface of the
Moon.
Put simply, with reliable and fast refueling,
Starship goes from being a major step forward
in reusable spaceflight to the key to the
solar system and to radically affordable deep
spaceflight.
The other selected companies are Advanced
Space of Boulder, Colorado; Vulcan Wireless
of Carlsbad, California; Aerogel Technologies
of Boston; Spirit AeroSystems Inc. of Wichita,
Kansas; Anasphere of Belgrade, Montana; Bally
Ribbon Mills of Bally, Pennsylvania; Sierra
Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nevada; Maxar Technologies
of Palo Alto, California; AerojetRocketdyne
of Canoga Park, California; and Colorado Power
Electronics Inc. of Fort Collins, Colorado.
Maxar will also work to develop some potential
key space technologies, including new types
of solar panels and robots that can assemble
themselves while in orbit.
And some groups will work on technologies
related to reusing rockets, something that
SpaceX has focused on in recent years.
For instance, Sierra Nevada will work on a
method for recovering the upper portion of
a rocket after it launches from Earth — a
feat that SpaceX hasn’t attempted yet.
All of these technologies sound very exciting,
and some are crucial for achieving NASA’s
goal of sending people to the Moon and Mars.
However, these partnerships are just getting
started, and it’s unclear when any of these
technologies will reach operational status.
NASA's 2024 crewed moon push is part of the
agency's Artemis program, which aims to establish
a long-term, sustainable human presence on
and around the moon over the next decade or
so.
If all goes according to plan, such work will
inform humanity's next giant leap: a crewed
mission to Mars, which NASA aims to pull off
in the 2030s.
The space agency plans to make all this happen
with the help of private industry and international
partners.
Ultimately, NASA is hoping that by giving
some assistance to the industry, the agency
can avoid the high cost of independently developing
these capabilities — and then reap the benefits
of these technologies when they’re fully
grown.
