Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin venture and its partners in the space industry say they’ve given NASA their proposal for a landing system designed to carry astronauts down to the surface of the moon and bring them back up. And they’ve released a 10-minute video explaining how they plan to do it.
This week’s submission of the Blue Origin-led team’s so-called Option A proposal marks a critical step in NASA’s process to select the commercial ventures that will build the human landing system (or systems) for its Artemis moon program. The current schedule calls for the first crewed Artemis landing to take place in 2024, although that date may slip.
NASA has identified three potential providers for the landing system, which would link up with NASA’s Orion deep-space capsule or the yet-to-be-built Gateway platform in high lunar orbit. In addition to Blue Origin’s “National Team,” California-based SpaceX and a team led by Alabama-based Dynetics are in the running.
Early next year, NASA is expected to select one or two teams to move on to the next phase of development.
Blue Origin’s main contribution to the National Team is to build the system’s descent element, which is based on its Blue Moon lander design.
Three stalwarts of the space industry are focusing on other elements of the landing system: Lockheed Martin is to build the ascent element, which is based on the design for its Orion capsule and will contain the Artemis crew during their trips to and from the lunar surface. Northrop Grumman will build the transfer element, which is based on the design for its Cygnus cargo craft and will provide propulsion for the lander in lunar orbit. Draper is working on avionics.
The National Team provided a progress report in a video released today.
In the seven months since it was selected as an Option A prospect, the team has been working behind the scenes to execute 25 technical demonstrations, said Brent Sherwood, Blue Origin’s vice president for advanced development programs.
Those tests include this month’s trial runs for Blue Origin’s BE-7 rocket engine, October’s in-space demonstration of a precision landing system, simulated docking tests and cryogenic tests for propellant tanks.
Steve Squyres, Blue Origin’s chief scientist, confirmed that Blue Origin is planning an uncrewed cargo mission to the moon’s south polar region, one year in advance of the crewed Artemis mission, to demonstrate the capabilities of the descent element.
“That provides an enormous amount of risk reduction,” said Squyres, a veteran of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover missions. “We get to practice. We get to try everything out first, without crew on board, and so we learn from that. We’re going to learn an enormous amount.”
A graphic accompanying Squyres video explanation shows the uncrewed Blue Moon lander using an onboard crate to lower a rover to the surface. The graphic suggests that other payloads could be ejected to the surface from the top of the lander.
The video includes a big-name endorsement from Harrison Schmitt, who was one of the last astronauts to walk on the moon and now serves as a member of Blue Origin’s science advisory board. “The National Team is the kind of outstanding leadership, outstanding experience that I like to work with,” Schmitt said.
But the last word in the video goes to Bezos — who’s been funding Blue Origin, headquartered in Kent, Wash., for the past 20 years.
“We have to use the resources of space,” Bezos says in a clip that’s taken from last year’s unveiling of the Blue Moon lander concept. “We must have a future for our grandchildren and their grandchildren. We were given a gift, this nearby body called the moon. And it’s this generation’s job to build that road to space, so that the future generations can unleash their creativity. None of this is easy. All of it is hard. Big things start small.”
