WASHINGTON — The two companies with NASA contracts to develop human lunar landers are also starting work on cargo versions of their spacecraft.
NASA has exercised the Human Landing System (HLS) option granted to Blue Origin and SpaceX to begin initial design and development work on a version of the lander capable of carrying large amounts of cargo to the lunar surface.
NASA mentioned this research in its Jan. 9 announcement about delays to the Artemis 2 and 3 missions. “NASA is also asking both Artemis human landing system providers, SpaceX and Blue Origin, to apply the knowledge gained in system development to future variations as part of existing contracts and to use large-scale aircraft on future missions.” “We also shared our request to initiate the possibility of transporting cargo,” the agency said. said in a press release.
“Over the past few months, we’ve been working with both human landing system providers SpaceX and Blue Origin to apply the work they’re doing with human-rated versions of the landers to land large cargo on the surface.” said Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s Moon-Mars program deputy administrator for exploration systems mission development, during a media call on January 9. However, NASA did not provide any other details about the work at the time, and the briefing focused on delays to the upcoming Artemis mission.
NASA spokeswoman Kathryn Hambleton said in a Jan. 19 statement to Space News that the work will be completed by options in Blue Origin’s HLS contract in May 2023 and SpaceX in November 2022. It said the deal was under an “Option B” contract, which was a modification of the original contract awarded to the company. SpaceX was awarded the HLS contract in April 2021. This option covers work through preliminary design review and requires no additional funding beyond the $3.4 billion for Blue Origin and $1.15 billion for SpaceX’s Option B.
“NASA expects these large cargo landers to have a high degree of commonality with human landing systems already in operation, with adjustments to payload interfaces and deployment mechanisms,” NASA said. Stated. “Preliminary design requirements include transporting 12 to 15 tons of supplies to the lunar surface.”
NASA added that the payloads for these landers have not yet been identified. The earliest a cargo lander will be used is Artemis 7, whose mission is scheduled for the early 2030s.
Neither company has publicly discussed developing a cargo version of the HLS lander. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk did mention the company’s Starship vehicle’s ability to land large payloads on the moon. Presentation posted by SpaceX on January 12th. “We want to go above and beyond what NASA asks us to do,” he said. “We want to go well beyond NASA’s requirements and be able to put enough payloads on the moon often enough to actually permanently occupy a lunar base.”
Blue Origin and SpaceX aren’t the only companies working on large cargo landers. The European Space Agency is in the early stages of developing Argonaut, a cargo lander that ESA is proposing to provide for future Artemis missions. As currently designed, Argonaut would carry about two tons of cargo, much less than what NASA is proposing for the cargo HLS variant.
The cargo lander option exercised by NASA is not the first contract between NASA and a company to deliver cargo to the moon. NASA selected the two companies, along with three others, in the second round of the Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) program in November 2019. SpaceX provided Starship, which the company announced at the time could deliver up to 100 metric tons to the moon’s surface. Meanwhile, Blue Origin offered the original cargo version of the Blue Moon lander, which can carry several tons to the moon.
Neither Blue Origin nor SpaceX has been awarded any CLPS tasks, and it is unclear whether either company has bid for any of the missions NASA has acquired through the program.