To the Moon (7/20/22)

Good morning. Last December, the UN declared July 20 “International Moon Day.” 

Why July 20? Well, today marks the 53rd anniversary of the first crewed landing on the Moon. The UN holiday isn’t just about Apollo 11’s historic feat on July 20, 1969, or American spaceflight—it “will also consider the achievements of all states in the exploration of the Moon and raise public awareness of sustainable Moon exploration and utilization.”

Today, we’ve prepared a special edition of Payload primarily focused on the machines, satellites, and vehicles that are Moon-bound sometime this decade. Enjoy…

In today's special edition:🌕 Artemis-era lunars and rovers 🌍 European lunar ambitions 💸 The term sheet (business as usual)

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Who's Who: Lunar Landers and Rovers

As NASA prepares to send humans back to the moon through its long-awaited Artemis program, it’s taking big steps to encourage commercial lander development. 

First order of business: CLPS. NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is funding 14 separate lander concepts from Astrobotic, Deep Space Systems, Draper Labs, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Lockheed Martin, Masten Space Systems, Moon Express, OrbitBeyond, Blue Origin, Ceres Robotics, Sierra Nevada Space, SpaceX, and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. 

Up first on the launch docket:

• Astrobotic: If all goes according to schedule, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander will be the first commercial lander to touch down on the Moon–or any non-Earth planetary body, for that matter. It’s slated to carry 11 payloads to Lacus Mortis, a lunar crater, later this year. 

• Astrobotic is also developing the larger Griffin lander, which will carry the NASA Ames-developed VIPER rover to the Moon. (That mission, NASA announced Monday, has been delayed a year until 2024 to allow more time for ground testing of Griffin.)

• Intuitive Machines: The company’s lander concept, Nova-C, is a cylinder-shaped capsule on six legs capable of delivering 100kg of payload to the surface of the Moon. The lander is scheduled to launch aboard a Falcon 9 late this year and carry five payloads to Oceanus Procellarum, a dark spot on the lunar surface.

• Firefly: The whimsically-named Blue Ghost lander is scheduled to make its debut in 2023. It will carry ten payloads to Mare Crisium, a basin on the near side of the Moon. Firefly plans to land a Blue Ghost on the Moon yearly after its first touchdown.

• Masten Space Systems: Masten’s XL-1 lander is headed to the lunar south pole in 2023. It’ll be loaded up with eight payloads, including MoonRanger, a lightweight rover that will demonstrate communications and mapping tech.

These are all purely robotic missions to the Moon. NASA has a contract with SpaceX for a Human Landing System (HLS) to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface. Egged on by Blue Origin, Congress, and others, the US space agency has announced it will solicit proposals for a second HLS concept. 

The American businesses sending landers and rovers to the Moon don’t end with CLPS. Venturi Astrolab, for one, emerged from stealth with a lunar rover concept, FLEX, earlier this year. 

Russia

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has a few lunar landing missions of its own planned in the next few years. Most missions have been put on ice or otherwise affected by international sanctions and by ESA pressing pause on joint spacefaring missions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s next Moon-bound lander is the Luna-25 mission, slated to launch in September and land on the lunar south pole to study lunar regolith (the loose rock coating the Moon’s surface). Originally, the lander would have been equipped with a European-built navigation camera. After ESA withdrew from the mission, Roscosmos opted to build its own instrument. The fate of Russia’s subsequent planned lander missions, Luna-26 and 27, still hangs in the balance.

India

ISRO, India’s space agency, was hoping to send its first craft to the lunar surface this August, but it’s now looking like a 2023 touchdown is more likely. The mission, Chandrayaan-3, is designed to place a lander on the Moon’s south pole. After the Chandrayaan-2 lander and its rover payload crash-landed on the Moon in 2019, ISRO wants to make sure that it won’t fail again.

Japan

Japan’s space agency, JAXA, has partnered separately with both Toyota and Nissan to build lunar rovers in the next few years. Lunar Cruiser, the Toyota prototype, is designed to help humans live comfortably on the Moon by 2040. The Nissan project, unveiled in December, uses the company’s all-wheel drive technology and electric vehicle tech for lunar applications.

A private Japanese company, ispace, is building its own lunar lander and rover as well. It’s hoping to launch its first lander this year, and its first lander/rover combo in 2024. After that, the company has ambitious plans to increase the cadence of its lunar landings.

+ While we’re here: NASA will share an update on Artemis I at 11am ET today. 

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European astronauts and industry are Moon-bound

As humanity again prepares to take a giant SLS-sized leap towards the surface of the Moon, Europe is preparing to play its part.

ESA’s contributions to NASA’s Artemis program include supplying the service modules for the Orion spacecraft and a key element of the lunar Gateway space station. These contributions have bought Europe access to the lunar outpost and, pending final negotiations, likely even the surface of the Moon. 

That means that when the newest class of ESA astronauts is selected later this year, the first European to set foot on the lunar surface may be among them. The lucky few in contention are currently undergoing a physical as part of the fourth phase of the selection process.

The agency’s contribution to Artemis and the benefits it will receive is, however, only the tip of a very exciting iceberg. European industry is setting its sights on the Moon and beyond, developing habitats, landers, rovers, and orbiters in all shapes and sizes. Ntention, a Norwegian startup, is even developing a smart astronaut glove for future crewed missions to the Moon and Mars.

Together with ESA and national space agencies from across the continent, these companies are ensuring that when the world returns to the Moon, Europe is right there alongside them.

In Other News

• Lockheed Martin ($LMT) posted $2.8B in Q2 space revenue and a $268M operating profit in the division (-11% and -20% YoY, respectively). Head here for our writeup on the company’s Q1 earnings and here for further analysis of Lockheed’s Q2 results.

• MIT astronomers say they’ve detected a mysterious “heartbeat” from a distant neutron star, consisting of a clear, periodic pattern of fast radio bursts. 

• SatixFy unveiled Onyx Aero for commercial airliners and large corporate jets. The satcom terminal can connect to satellites in LEO, MEO, and GEO orbits. 

• Microsoft Azure formed a network of space partners. The cloud computing powerhouse lists satellite manufacturers, ground segment players, SpaceX, and newer startups in its inaugural cohort of partners.

• AST SpaceMobile’s ($ASTS) BlueWalker 3 left “the nest” in Texas. The company has spent ~$87M building and testing the demo satellite. 

• Airbus formed a new connectivity division to begin monetizing its high-flying HAPS drones. 

The View from 25,000 Feet

We went back into the archives for this one. Shot on Aug. 21, 2017 on a NASA Gulfstream jet, this photo shows the "diamond-ring effect" during a total solar eclipse. That's the Moon you're looking at in the center of the photo.