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NASA has given three space companies the chance to design the next-generation moon buggy — but only one design will go to space.
Footage obtained by TechCrunch shows the catastrophic ending that Astra’s Rocket 3.0 suffered during prelaunch testing in March 2020.
NASA has given three space companies the chance to design the next generation moon buggy — but only one design will go to space.
Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab are developing rugged vehicles intended for astronauts to drive around on the lunar surface, from which NASA may choose as early as next year.
The three teams will now enter into a 12-month “feasibility phase” that will culminate in a preliminary design review.
NASA declined to specify the dollar value of the awards, though Intuitive Machines said in a statement that it was awarded a $30 million contract.
“With NASA’s Artemis campaign, we are building up the capabilities needed to establish a longer-term exploration and presence of the moon,” he said.
Intuitive Machines’ second moon mission is still on track to launch before the end of this year, after the company only had to make minor adjustments to the lunar lander design, executives said during an earnings call Thursday.
That same lander class, which the company calls Nova-C, will be returning to the moon later this year in that second mission.
The Intuitive Machines team identified just “a handful of adjustments” that will be implemented on the second lander, CEO Steve Altemus said during the earnings call.
Intuitive Machines ended the fourth quarter of 2023 with $30.6 million in revenue and a cash balance of just $4.5 million.
Beyond the second moon mission, 2024 will likely be a pivotal year for the company, which is awaiting the decision on NASA awards that could be extremely lucrative.
Intuitive Machines’ first moon mission will come to a premature end due to the spacecraft landing on its side, which altered how the solar panels are positioned in relation to the sun, the company said in an update Tuesday morning.
Intuitive Machines made history when it landed its spacecraft, called Odysseus, near the lunar south pole last week.
The lander is the first American hardware to touch the lunar surface since NASA’s final crewed Apollo mission in 1972.
It’s also the first privately built and operated spacecraft to land on the moon — ever – and the closest a lander has ever come to the lunar south pole.
Intuitive Machines and NASA leadership will host a second televised news conference tomorrow to discuss updates to the mission.
Intuitive Machines has landed a spacecraft on the lunar surface, in a historic first for a private company.
“What we can confirm without a doubt is that our equipment is on the surface of the moon and we are transmitting,” mission director and Intuitive Machines CTO Tim Crain said.
Instead, the lander leveraged one of the onboard payloads, NASA’s laser and doppler lidar sensors, to guide the spacecraft to the lunar surface.
All in all, Intuitive Machines’ contract is worth a little less than $118 million.
Intuitive Machines’ victory comes shortly after another CLPS awardee, Astrobotic, failed to put its lander on the moon.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Company shared the first image of its lander on the lunar surface, revealing that the spacecraft touched down on the moon upside-down.
It’s a remarkable recovery for the spacecraft, which experienced an “abnormality in the main engine” that affecting the landing orientation when it was just 50 meters above the lunar surface, JAXA said in an update Thursday.
Remarkably, the lander ended up just 55 meters east of the original target landing site.
The lander was carrying two rovers; one of the rovers, called Lunar Exploration Vehicle-2, or SORA-Q, is responsible for the photo.
The rovers were ejected from the spacecraft before landing.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Company shared the first image of its lander on the lunar surface, revealing that the spacecraft touched down on the moon upside-down.
It’s a remarkable recovery for the spacecraft, which experienced an “abnormality in the main engine” that affecting the landing orientation when it was just 50 meters above the lunar surface, JAXA said in an update Thursday.
Remarkably, the lander ended up just 55 meters east of the original target landing site.
The lander was carrying two rovers; one of the rovers, called Lunar Exploration Vehicle-2, or SORA-Q, is responsible for the photo.
The rovers were ejected from the spacecraft before landing.
For the second week in a row, we have lunar lander news to report on.
Story of the weekHow could the story of the week be anything other than SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon), the Japanese lunar lander that touched down on the moon on Friday?
But even with the issue, the mission achieved a huge portion of its goal, which was to demonstrate a soft lunar landing using optical navigation technology.
Launch highlightsWe saw our first crewed mission this year – but even more notably, it was a completely private mission (as in not a NASA astronaut mission).
Axiom Space launched its third mission with launch partner SpaceX on Thursday, with the crew successfully docking with the International Space Station at 5:42 AM EST on Saturday, January 20.
Japan’s long-planned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon has successfully touched down on the lunar surface, making the nation the fifth in history to do so.
But all is not well for SLIM, which may have a limited lease on life due to trouble with its solar cells.
In a press conference following the early-morning (local time) landing on the Moon, the directors of JAXA and the mission explained that “The soft landing was itself successful; SLIM has been communicating and it receiving commands.
However, as the other sensors are working correctly and showing healthy values, they feel confident it is limited to the solar cells themselves.
The initial press conference was primarily to announce the initial success of a soft landing and functioning lunar lander.
Astrobotic’s lunar lander will be reentering Earth’s atmosphere over a remote part of the South Pacific Ocean tomorrow afternoon, bringing to a close the failed moon landing mission.
Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic has been providing frequent updates on the Peregrine lunar lander since it launched on United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur on January 8.
The source of the anomaly was an ongoing propellant leak, which were preventing Peregrine from pointing its solar arrays at the sun.
But by the time it reenters the atmosphere tomorrow, Peregrine will have operated in space for over ten days.
Due to the propellant leak, Astrobotic said it had devised a two-step process to maneuver the spacecraft to the projected trajectory for reentry.
